Torchwood Comes to CPL

July 8, 2015June 19, 2015 / Susan O. / 4 Comments

Back in 1987, when I started watching a strange little British science-fiction children’s TV show called Dr. Who, it was barely known in the U.S. I actually had to pull it in from Canada, which meant a tipsy Rube Goldberg contraption of raising my TV up high, attaching tinfoil to the antenna, wires to the tin foil, a coat hanger, and all this thrown out the third-story window, because my dorm room was on the opposite side from all the TV signals. Merchandising was rare, usually imported, and extremely expensive.

Fast forward to 2005. After several years of spotty specials, Dr. Who is brought back to life with actor Christopher Eccleston in the lead role (you might know him from Gone in 60 Seconds, or Thor: The Dark World). This time the BBC has actually put money into it, and it is by far some of the best produced, best-written television out there. Period. And among the recurring companions was the role of Captain Jack Harkness, a mysterious immortal figure from the future, played by actor John Barrowman. Jack Harkness was such a strong character the BBC gave Jack Harkness his own spin-off in 2006, Torchwood (which, by the way, is an anagram for Doctor Who). In American, think X-Files.

The Torchwood Institute is set up as a present-day agency hunting present-day aliens that threaten (mostly) London and Wales. It is based in Cardiff, Wales, and headed by Captain Jack Harkness, a former Time Agent who operates above the law, with powerful technology at his hands. When police officer Gwen Cooper (Eve Miles) stumbles onto the secret lair of Torchwood, she won’t stop investigating, until finally Harkness allows her to join them. It takes Gwen quite a bit to get used to everything going on around her, sworn to secrecy, which puts her at odds with her fiance Rhys, who thinks she’s going batty. She’s never quite sure if Jack is on the side of Earth or not, and it takes her a long time to trust him (partly because at the beginning he keeps trying to slip her drugs to make her forget). Sometimes Jack does seem to have an evil side, but really he’s more of a devout neutral, weighing the balance of what’s right and what’s wrong in each situation. Sometimes you love him, and, after the Children of Earth storyline, you understand his reasoning but you truly want to hate him.

Torchwood is NOT a children’s show, and was never meant to be. It was meant as an adult show. It is at times tough and gritty, and it deals with some very adult themes and morals, including nudity and violence, besides some episodes being as creepy as the best horror films. Although Jack Harkness would make guest appearances on Dr. Who, Dr. Who never appears in Torchwood (beyond the sound of his ship in the background for one episode), specifically to emphasize that they did not want children crossing over to the other show.

I urge you to give the series a try. It is unlike anything on American TV. Especially check out the episodes Countrycide, Captain Jack Harkness, and Dead Man Walking. If you have a high tolerance for anger and horror, watch the Children of Earth storyline.

Torchwood is a wonderful series, less science-fiction than horror, with a lot of drama thrown in. I’ve met both Eve Miles and John Barrowman; they are a delight in person and their on-screen charisma is authentic. Barrowman, a die-hard joker and pain in the neck, had no problem with the nudity on the show, and often used it to shock his castmates; if they look horrified on screen, it just might be an authentic look from something Barrowman had done just as the cameras started to roll. Barrowman is well-known in England, a decent singer of his own with several albums, and was one of the judges of the British version of America’s Got Talent. He can currently be seen on Arrow. Burn Gorman (Owen) has also become a familiar face, in everything from The Dark Knight Rises to Game of Thrones, Pacific Rim, Alexander and the Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, to a current run on the AMC series Turn: Washington’s Spies.

CPL has the entire run of Torchwood on both DVD and Blu-ray. Check it out, and its wonderful cast of talented stars!

Oprah’s Summer Reading – 2015

July 6, 2015June 25, 2015 / Linda / 2 Comments

O, The Oprah Magazine has listed their favorite books for the upcoming summer season. Below is the short version. You can see the full list in the July 2015 issue of the magazine.

Ladies on the move

Paris, He Said – Christine Sneed – Aspiring painter Jayne is questioning the choices she has made in the years since college and is struggling to pay her bills in Manhattan when she is given the opportunity to move to Paris with her wealthy lover and benefactor, Laurent Moller, who owns and operates two art galleries.

The Enlightenment of Nina Findlay – Andrea Gillies – Seeking refuge on a tiny Greek island after an estrangement from two brothers with whom she was in a long-time love triangle, Nina discovers in the wake of an accident the influence of her parents’ marriage on her own.

Re Jane – Patricia Park – Jane Re, a half-Korean, half-American orphan, escapes to Seoul where she reconnects with her family while struggling to learn the ways of modern-day Korea, and wonders if the man she loves is really the man for her as she tries to find balance between two cultures and accept who she really is.

Mysteries and Thrillers

The Ice Twins – S.K. Tremayne – Moving to a tiny Scottish island a year after one of their identical twin daughters, Lydia, dies in an accident, Angus and Sarah are shattered when their surviving daughter claims they have mistaken her identity and that she is actually the twin they believed dead.

Hyacinth Girls – Lauren Frankel – When her 13-year-old daughter Callie begins receiving suicidal notes from Robyn, the girl she supposedly bullied, Rebecca is determined to save the unbalanced Robyn, refusing to let the school stand in her way, but in doing so, unknowingly places her own daughter’s life in great danger.

Jack of Spades – Joyce Carol Oates – Enjoying his successful career and devoted family, a best-selling writer secretly authors a masochist-themed series that threatens his respectable community standing and becomes subject to a plagiarism lawsuit.

Biography and Memoir

The Pawnbroker’s Daughter – Maxine Kumin – A new collection of work from the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet depicts her childhood during the Depression in Philadelphia, her education at Radcliffe College, her rural New England farm and the changing tone and subject matter of her poetry over her lifetime.

My Generation – William Styron – collection of work spanning the career of the author includes complex pieces on race as well as extracts describing his daily walks with his beloved dog.

Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward County – Kristen Green – A reporter, combining hard-hitting investigative journalism with a sweeping family narrative, exposes a little-known chapter of American History, revealing her hometown’s shameful legacy of refusing to integrate after the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision in the case of Brown vs. Board of Education.

Literary Fiction

Our Souls at Night – Kent Haruf – A senior-aged widow and widower forge a loving bond over shared loneliness and respective histories, provoking local gossip and the disapproval of their grown children in ways that are further complicated by an extended visit by a sad young grandchild.

Death and Mr. Pickwick – Stephen Jarvis – A novel based on the life of artist Robert Seymour describes the birth of “The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club,” a series of whimsical sketches by Seymour that were paired with stories by a young Charles Dickens, using the pen name Boz.

The Sunlit Night – Rebecca Dinerstein – In the barren landscape of the Far North, under the ever-present midnight sun, Frances, who lives in an isolated artist colony, and Yasha, who arrives from Brooklyn to fulfill his beloved father’s last wish, form a bond that offers them solace amidst great uncertainty.

Happy Summer Reading!

Book Club Picks – Literary Fiction

June 29, 2015June 1, 2015 / Linda / Leave a comment

A selection of great fiction for your book club to enjoy.

A Spool of Thread – Anne Tyler – “It was a beautiful, breezy, yellow-and-green afternoon. . .” This is how Abby Whitshank always begins the story of how she fell in love with Red that day in July 1959. The Whitshanks are one of those families that radiate togetherness: an indefinable, enviable kind of specialness. But they are also like all families, in that the stories they tell themselves reveal only part of the picture. Abby and Red and their four grown children have accumulated not only tender moments, laughter, and celebrations, but also jealousies, disappointments, and carefully guarded secrets. From Red’s father and mother, newly arrived in Baltimore in the 1920s, to Abby and Red’s grandchildren carrying the family legacy boisterously into the twenty-first century, here are four generations of Whitshanks, their lives unfolding in and around the sprawling, lovingly worn Baltimore house that has always been their anchor.

Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay – Elean Ferrante – In this third Neapolitan novel, Elena and Lila, the two girls whom readers first met in My Brilliant Friend, have become women. Lila married at sixteen and has a young son; she has left her husband and the comforts her marriage brought and now works as a common laborer. Elena has left the neighborhood, earned her college degree, and published a successful novel, all of which has opened the doors to a world of learned interlocutors and richly furnished salons. Both women have attempted are pushing against the walls of a prison that would have seen them living a life of misery, ignorance and submission. They are afloat on the great sea of opportunities that opened up during the nineteen-seventies. Yet they are still very much bound to each other by a strong, unbreakable bond.

Ordinary Grace – William Kent Krueger – Looking back at a tragic event that occurred during his thirteenth year, Frank Drum explores how a complicated web of secrets, adultery, and betrayal shattered his Methodist family and their small 1961 Minnesota community.

Lila – Marilynne Robinson – Lila, homeless and alone after years of roaming the countryside, steps inside a small-town Iowa church–the only available shelter from the rain–and ignites a romance and a debate that will reshape her life. She becomes the wife of a minister, John Ames, and begins a new existence while trying to make sense of the life that preceded her newfound security.

When I Found You – Catherine Ryan Hyde – While duck hunting one morning, childless, middle-aged Nathan McCann finds a newborn abandoned in the woods. To his shock, the child—wrapped in a sweater and wearing a tiny knitted hat—is still alive. To his wife’s shock, Nathan wants to adopt the boy…but the child’s grandmother steps in. Nathan makes her promise, however, that one day she’ll bring the boy to meet him so he can reveal that he was the one who rescued him.

Fifteen years later, the widowered Nathan discovers the child abandoned once again—this time at his doorstep. Named Nat, the teenager has grown into a sullen delinquent whose grandmother can no longer tolerate him. Nathan agrees to care for Nat, and the two engage in a battle of wills that spans years. Still, the older man repeatedly assures the youngster that, unlike the rest of the world, he will never abandon him—not even when Nat suffers a trauma that changes both of their lives forever.

Take Your Dog To Work Day – June 26, 2015

June 26, 2015June 3, 2015 / Linda / Leave a comment

Today has been designated as Take Your Dog to Work Day by Pet Sitters International. This day was established in 1999 as a way to recognize dogs as great companions and to encourage adoption by showing non-dog owners the joys of owning a dog. Will you be taking your dog to work? Do you have any activities planned? What’s the best thing about taking your dog to work? Let us know how your day went!

The Cheshire Library has about 1900 items featuring dogs – DVDs, children’s books, adult books, – there’s something for everyone. We have books on training, on service dogs, fiction books with dogs incorporated in the story, whimsical storybooks for children, movies about dogs. Take a look at what the Cheshire Library has to offer here . Below is a small sampling of what you can find at the library.

CHILDREN

Dogs, How to choose and care for a dog – Laura S. Jeffrey

A Dog’s Life: The Autobiography of a stray – Ann M. Martin

Lulu Walks the Dogs – Lane Smith

Night of the Howling Dogs – Graham Salisbury (YA)

Dogs in the Dead of Night – Mary Pope Osborne

Dogs – Emily Gravett

My Dog’s A Scaredy Cat – Henry Winkler

Not Afraid of Dogs – Susanna Pitzer

ADULT

Dogs Never Lie About Love – Jeffrey Moussaieff

The Possibility Dogs: what a handful of unadoptables taught me about service, hope and healing – Susannah Charleston

War Dogs: tales of canine heroism, history and love – Rebecca Frankel

Bad Dogs Have More Fun: selected writings on family, animals, and life – John Grogan

Old Dogs, New Tricks: understanding and retraining older and rescued dogs – David Taylor

Must Love Dogs – Claire Cook

Isle of Dogs – Patricia Cornwell

The Dogs of Babel – Carolyn Parkhurst

DVDs

All Dogs Go To Heaven

Must Love Dogs

Dogs Decoded

Through a Dog’s Eyes

Chilly Dogs

Hachi: a dog’s tail

Bolt

The Shaggy Dog

Christian Grey Speaks – His Side of Fifty Shades of Grey

June 15, 2015June 9, 2015 / Linda / Leave a comment

If you are still fantasizing about Christian Grey, then you are in luck. On June 1, 2015, it was announced that E L James is releasing a new version of her bestselling novel, Fifty Shades of Grey, due out on June 18, 2015. Fans of the trilogy will recognize this date as Christian’s birthday. The new book – Grey – is written from Christian’s point of view. In a statement released through Vintage Anchor (paperback imprint of Penguin Random House), James is dedicating the new book to readers who had “asked…and asked…and asked…asked” for a novel narrated by Christian. James adds: “Christian is a complex character, and readers have always been fascinated by his desires and motivations, and his troubled past. Also, as anyone who has ever been in a relationship knows, there are two sides to every story.”

Want to reread the original series? Check out their availability in our catalog – Fifty Shades of Grey, Fifty Shades Darker, Fifty Shades Freed.