Research

Did you know that March is National Crochet Month?

/ Sharon Tyler / Leave a comment

I had no idea that there was an entire month dedicated to my favorite pastime (aside from reading of course). March is apparently National Crochet Month! I use crochet to relax and unwind while at the same time making something. I often find myself saying “just one more row”, or “as soon as i finish this color” when I should really be getting up to cook dinner or go to bed at night. A bonus is that while working on something simple or very comfortable for me I can read or watch television as I work away.

Are you a fellow crocheter, or someone that wants to learn or pick it up again after a long hiatus? Do you want to learn from scratch, crochet1pick up some new stitches, or help someone else learn? Well, thankfully the library has a variety of books to help regardless of skill level. There are even books in our children’s section to help teach the younger generations how to love yarn and hooks as much as I do.

Here are some great books to get you started, help you brush up on the basics, and learn some new stitches and techniques in the process:crochet2

1. The Crochet Answer Book by Edie Eckman

2. How to Crochet: the Definitive Crochet Course, Complete with Step-by-Step Techniques, Stitch Libraries, and Projects for your Home and Family and Pauline Turner

3. Ultimate Crochet Bible: a Complete crochet3Reference with Step-by-step Techniques by Jane Crowfoot

4. Rowan Presents Crochet Workshop: the Complete Course for the Beginner to Intermediate Crocheter by Emma Seddon & Sharon Brant

5. Crochet-opedia: the Only Crochet Reference You’ll Ever Need by Julie Oparkacrochet5

6. 200 Crochet Tips, Techniques & trade Secrets by Jan Eaton

7. The Chicks with Sticks’ Quide to Crochet: Learn to Crochet with More than Thirty Cool, Easy Patterns by Nancy Queen and Mary Ellen O’Connell

crochet78. Donna Kooler’s Encyclopedia of Crochet

9. Teach Yourself Visually Crochet by Cecily Keim

10. Not Your Mama’s Crochet: the Cool and Creative Way to Join the Chain Gang by Amy Swenson

Looking for some unique or comprehensive pattern colcrochet10lections or more advanced instruction? Well, then you might want to check out: Crochet Master Class: Lessons and Projects from Today’s Top Crocheters by Jean Leinhauser and Rita Weiss, Crochet One-Skein Wonders: 101 Projects from Crocheters around the World edited by Judith Durant and Edie Eckman, Hip to Crochet: 23 Contemporary Projects for Today’s Crocheter by Judith L. crochetbottomSwartz, The Big Book of Weekend Crochet: Over 30 Stylish Projects by Hilary Mackin and Sue Whiting, 200 Crochet Blocks: for Blankets, Throws, and Afghans by Jan Eaton, Couture Crochet Workshop : Mastering Fit, Fashion, and Finesse by Lily M. Chin, Calamity-Free Crochet: Trouble-shooting Tips and Advice for the Savvy Needlecrafter by Catherine Hirst, The Ultimate Sourcebook of Knitting andcrochetbotm2 Crochet Stitches,  Big Book of Crochet Afghans: 26 Afghans for Year-Round Stitching, Knit-and-Crochet Garden , or Candy Crochet: 50 Adorable Designs for Infants & Toddlers by Candi Jensen.

I have included some of my go-to references in this list, but I could not sneak them all in. If you have a favorite I missed, or one that really missed the mark that you would suggest others of a particular skill level avoid, please include that information in the comments so others can make use of that information.

National Eating Disorder Awareness Week

/ Sharon Tyler / Leave a comment

February 22 through 28th is National Eating Disorder Awareness Week. While many of us are still focused on New Years resolutions about health and weight, it is a good time to stop and think about the ramifications of the focus on being perfect that seems so prevalent in today’s world. Making changes is great, but it is important that we all do so in a smart and healthy manner.

There are far too many young adults and adults out there suffering from eating disorders and other self image problems. to make matters works these concerns are becoming more of an issue with younger and younger children each year. thankfully there are many resources out there, and many fantastic books, to help. Here is a selection of related books that I would recommend for anyone that suffers from one of these disorders, knows someone that does, worries that someone close to you (or you yourself) might be heading in that direction, or just wants to educate themselves in order to understand and help others.

I have broken the list down into fiction featuring characters dealing with eating disorders and nonfiction books that can help answer specific questions with research and medical information. this is far from a comprehensive list, so if you have found a resource or book that I have forgotten please mention it in a comment to share with others.

For more immediate help, information, and support please visit the National Eating Disorder Association‘s or the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders website.

Fiction:
1. Skin & Bones by Sherry Shahan
2. Butter by Erin Jade Lange
3. Purge by Sarah Darer Littman
4. Zero by Diane Tullson
5. Faded Denim: Color me Trapped by Melody Carlson
6. Healing Waters by Nancy Rue & Stephen Arterburn.

More quality adult and young adult fiction that deals with eating disorders include: Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson, Massive by Julia Bell, Just Listen by Sarah Dessen, Perfect by Natasha Friend, Skinny by Ibi Kaslik, Saving Ruth by Zoe Fishman, Skin by Adrienne Maria Vrettos, and Hunger by Jackie Morse Kessler.

Non Fiction:
1. If Your Adolescent has an Eating Disorder: an Essential Resource for Parents by B. Timothy Walsh and V. L. Cameron
2. Take Charge of your Child’s Eating Disorder: a Physician’s Step-by-Step Guide to Defeating Anorexia and Bulimia by Pamela Carlton, and Deborah Ashin
3.Surviving an Eating Disorder: Strategies for Family and Friends by Michele Seigel, Judith Brisman, Margot Weinshel
4.Regaining your Self: Breaking Free from the Eating Disorder Identity: a Bold New Approach by Ira M. Saker and Sheila Buff
5.Gaining: the Truth about Life after Eating Disorders by Aimee Liu
6.Eating Disorders: the Facts by Suzanne Abraham and Derek Llewellyn-Jones
7.Going Hungry: Writers on Desire, Self-denial, and Overcoming Anorexia edited by Kate Taylor.

I would also suggest checking out The Eating Disorder Sourcebook by Carolyn Costin, Next to Nothing: a Firsthand Account of one Teenager’s Experience with an Eating Disorder by Carrie Arnold with B. Timothy Walsh, Life Beyond your Eating Disorder: Reclaim Yourself, Regain your Health, Recover for Good by Johanna S. Kandel, Treatment Plans and Interventions for Bulimia and Binge-eating Disorder by Rene D. Zweig, Robert L. Leahy, Goodbye Ed, Hello Me : Recover from your Eating Disorder and Fall in Love with Life by Jenni Schaefer, Anatomy of Anorexia by Steven Levenkron and When Dieting Becomes Dangerous: a Guide to Understanding and Treating Anorexia and Bulimia by Deborah Marcontell Michel, Susan G. Willard.

Uniquely Tasty Cookbooks

/ Sharon Tyler / Leave a comment

If you browse the cookbook section of the library, Amazon, or any bookstore you are liable to run into a wide variety of cookbooks about traditional cuisines and diets that are intended to make you healthier. However, there are also a large number of less expected cooking1or strangely specific titles that tend to get lost in the shuffle, such as recipes all featuring nutella or using a waffle iron with unexpected food. Here are some of the most unique and tastily temping or worrying cookbooks that I have seen go by at the circulation desk.

1. Nutella: the 30 Best Recipes edited by Johana Amsilli

2. Will it Waffle?: 53 Unexpected and Irresistible Recipes to Make in a cooking2Waffle Iron by Daniel Shumski

3. The Mac + Cheese Cookbook: 50 Simple Recipes from Homeroom, America’s Favorite Mac and Cheese Restaurant by Allison Arevalo and Erin Wade

4. Melt: 100 Amazing Adventures in Grilled Cheese by Shane Kearnscooking3

5. Weelicious Lunches: Think Outside the Lunchbox with More than 160 Happier Meals by Catherine McCord

6.Meatloaf: Recipes for Everyone’s Favorite by Maryana Vollstedt

7.Green Eggs and Ham Cookbook: Recipes Inspired by Dr. Seuss! concocted by Georgeanne Brennan and photographed by Frankie Frankenycooking4

8. Muffin Tin Chef: 101 Savory Snacks, Adorable Appetizers, Enticing Entrees & Delicious Desserts by Matt Kadey

9. Fifty Shades of Kale: 50 Fresh and Satisfying Recipes that are Bound to Please by Drew Ramsey, MD & Jennifer Iserloh ; with photographs by Ian McSpadden

10. No Bake Makery: More Than 80 cooking5Two-Bite Treats Made with Lovin’ Not an Oven by Cristina Suarez Krumsick

For more unique and tasty reads you might want to check out: The Book Club Cookbook: Recipes and Food for Thought from your Book Club’s Favorite Books and Authors by Judy Gelman and Vicki Levy Krupp, The Craft Beer Cookbook: from IPAs and Bocks to Logers and Porters, 100 Artisanal Recipes for Cooking with Beer by Jacquelyn Dodd, Serious Barbecue: Smoke, Char, Baste, and Brush your Way to Great Outdoor Cooking by Adam Perry Lang, with J.J. Goode and Amy Vogler, Cast-Iron Cooking with cooking6Sisters on the Fly by Irene Rawlings, Super Seeds: Cooking with Power-Packed Chia, Quinoa, Flax, Hemp & Amaranth by Kim Lutz, Orange is the New Black Presents the Cookbook: Bites, Booze, Secrets, and Stories from Inside the Big House by Jenji Kohan, Tara Herrmann, Hartley Voss, and Alex Regnery, The Book of Burger by Rachael Ray, Thug Kitchen: Eat Like You Give a F*ck,  Insanewiches: 101 Ways to Think Outside the Lunchbox by Adrian cooking7Fiorino, Fifty Shades of Chicken: a Parody in a Cookbook by FL Fowler, Irish Pub Cooking by Larry Doyle, or Mom ‘n’ Pop’s Apple Pie: 1950’s Cookbook; Over 300 Great Recipes from the Golden Age of American Home Cooking compiled and edited by Barbara Stuart Peterson.

Celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. Day with Knowledge and Service

/ Sharon Tyler / Leave a comment
January 19, 2015 is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. In 1994 Congress designated MLK day as a day of service. The MLK Day of Service is the only federal holiday observed as a national day of service. It calls for Americans to work together in order to provide solutions to our most pressing national problems. To learn more about the day check out the official website here.

The titles below include children’s books about Dr. King, fiction and nonfiction books about ordinary people who stand up for what’s right, and stories about helping others and giving back. Then there is a list of books about volunteering, to help choose what avenues we each might want to take in volunteering or service. No matter the day, helping out in the community is rewarding for the volunteer and those it helps. So even if you cannot participate on the designated day, maybe a book can help in finding something you can be passionate about or enjoy while serving the community.

People Who Made a Difference:

1. Child of the Civil Rights Movement by  Paula Young Shelton. A daughter of civil rights activist Andrew Young describes her experiences of growing up in the Deep South at the height of the movement, sharing her witness to the efforts of her father, family friend Martin Luther King, Jr. and thousands of others who participated in the historic march from Selma to Montgomery.

 

2. March On!: The Day My Brother Martin Changed the World by Christine King Farris.Having led thousands in a march for civil rights to the foot of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. made the most of the historical moment by giving a speech that would forever inspire people to continue to fight for change in the years ahead.

3. Through My Eyes by Ruby Bridges. Provides the first-hand factual account of the six-year-old student who made history by having been one of the first black children to attend an all-white, segregated school in the 1960s.

4.Sit-in: How Four Friends Stood Up by Sitting Down by Andrea Davis Pinkney. A picture book celebration of the
50th anniversary of the momentous Woolworth’s lunch counter sit-in, when four college students staged a peaceful protest that became a defining moment in the struggle for racial equality and the growing Civil Rights Movement.

More books on civil rights and how individuals affect change include:The Story of Ruby Bridges by Robert Coles,  I Am Rosa Parks by Rosa Parks, Heroes for Civil Rightsby David A. Adler, Ida B. Wells: Mother of the Civil Rights Movement by Dennis Brindell Fradin and Judith Bloom Fradin, Freedom Riders: John Lewis and Jim Zwerg on the Front Lines of the Civil Rights Movementby Ann Bausum, My Country, ’tis of Thee: How One Song Reveals the History of Civil Rights by Claire Rudolf Murphy, Miles to Go for Freedom: Segregation and Civil Rights in the Jim Crow Yearsby Linda Barrett, The Girl From the Tar Paper School: Barbara Rose Johns and the Advent of the Civil Rights Movement by Teri Kanefield, and Free at Last?: The Civil Rights Movement and the People Who Made Itby Fred Powledge. 

Inspiration to Serve:

1. 50 Ways to Save our Children: Small, Medium & Big Ways You Can Change a Child’s Lifeby Cheryl Saban.Describes how to make a difference in a child’s life, including collecting toys for homeless shelters, donating books to schools and libraries, volunteer work, charitable donations, and starting a scholarship fund.

2. Teens With The Courage to Give: Young People who Triumphed over Tragedy and Volunteered to Make a Difference by Jackie Waldman. Thirty young people tell their stories of overcoming hardship to become volunteers in this inspiring look at a national trend among teenagers.

3. Our Day to End Poverty: 24 Ways You Can Make a Difference by Shannon Daley-Harris and Jeffrey Keenan, with Karen Speerstra.Imagine ending poverty at home and around the globe in our own lifetimes. Imagine your actions combining with others; actions to make poverty history. With originality and imagination, this book invites us to look at our very ordinary days, from waking up in the morning to going to bed in the evening, and to begin to think about poverty in new and creative ways. “Our Day to End Poverty” is organized into 24 “hour/chapter” segments.  Each chapter connects with your day, from breakfast to bedtime, relating these steps to ending poverty to our daily routines. Some times a problem gets to be so big, we feel there is nothing we can do about it. “Our Day to End Poverty” reminds us that if we all do just a little, a lot can get done.

  4. Giving: How Each of us Can Change the World by Bill Clinton. Compiling anecdotes about the diverse charitable efforts of the famous and non-so-famous, the former president looks at the positive influence of such work in every corner of the world and examines the profound benefits of working for the good of others for all humankind.
Looking for more inspiration? Try checking out The Promise of a Pencil: How an Ordinary Person Can Create Extraordinary Change by Adam Braun, Give a Little: How Your Small Donations Can Transform Our World by Wendy Smith, Immersion Travel USA: The Best and Most Meaningful Volunteering, Living, and Learning Excursions by Sheryl Kayne, Green Volunteers: The World Guide to Voluntary Work in Nature Conservation edited by Fabio Asuneda, Volunteering: The Ultimate Teen Guide by Kathlyn Gay, In a Heartbeat: Sharing the Power of Cheerful Giving by Leigh Anne and Sean Tuohy with Sally Jenkins, The Busy Family’s Guide to Volunteering: Do Good, Have Fun, Make a Difference as a Family! by Jenny Friedman, Volunteer Vacations: Short-term Adventures that will Benefit You and Others by Bill McMillon, Doug Cutchins, and Anne Geissinger, or Volunteering: A How-to Guide by Audrey Borus.

Tech Talk And the Really Big TV

/ Susan O. / Leave a comment

Are you one of the lucky ones who got a large-screen TV for the holidays this year? Did you just replace an aging (and heavy) old picture-tube with a nice, light digital flatscreen, or did you go all-out and get that giant 50, 60, or even 80” monster that feels like you’re at the movie theater? Aren’t those digital cable channels amazing crystal clear?
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And are you upset with the really, really weird picture that makes it look like you’re watching a 1970’s BBC play?

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Hm. You are not alone. We had a nice 32” digital flatscreen, but when we hit a season-clearance sale the day after Christmas and found a 50” for less than we paid for the 32”, we couldn’t say no. And thus we got hit by what is technically known as “The Soap Opera Effect.”
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Does your picture look strange, like a live performance of a soap opera, or an old videotape spacing everything out and making it look – well, not like a TV picture? There’s a reason for that. “Normal” TV pictures, those we’ve all grown up with, “refresh” or “run” at a speed of 60 frames per second (if you’ve ever seen a reel-to-reel movie, maybe in school, think of all those still frames whipping through the machine to make the movie move, and think of sixty of those still pictures every second, or 3600 of them every minute). That’s what our brains can process as smooth motion, and makes our TV look like TV.
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Now enter digital. LCD TVs, because of all those pixels firing on and off, have trouble keeping motion from blurring (or, technically, “juddering”). Some people don’t like that blur, and to combat it that number of “frames” or still pictures has been sped up to 120, or even 240 frames per second . That allows you to see all those Batman action shots in such blinding big-screen clarity it’s almost like stop-motion. Football runners never blur. Car crashes never occur too fast to follow. You can trace the path of every blood spatter when those bullets hit – better than reality. However, there are still only filmed at 60 frames per second – the extra “frames” are “filled in” either by duplicating still frames, or having the computer brain of the TV “manufacture” extra frames between actual ones (frame 1, insert frame 1.5, frame 2, make up a 2.5 to connect to frame 3, etc.) all on a microscopic increment scale.
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Still follow? In short, to keep the picture smooth, extra non-existent pictures are slipped in to keep the picture from jerking.
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It’s beautiful, but the price you pay for all that motion smoothing is The Soap Opera Effect. And it has nothing to do with what you’re watching – cable channels, an old DVD, a regular Blu-Ray, or a Super HD format, it’s just the speed the TV runs at. So what can you do if you absolutely positively hate that weird flat Masterpiece-Theater-Meets-As- The-World-Turns look?
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A little, but not necessarily much. Go to your TV’s “settings” selection. There will be a setting that addresses “motion,” “motion control,” or “motion smoothing,” or some other term usually with the word motion – Google your exact TV model number for the term your TV uses. Most TVs come from the factory with the motion smoothing default setting to ON. Find your TV’s setting and simply turn the control to OFF. Yes, sometimes it’s easier said than done, and in my case it helped a little but not a lot.
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The easiest solution is 1) buy a smaller TV. Everything is less noticeable on a smaller screen. Being able to count the hairs inside Gandalf’s nose is far more distracting than you think. Remember the days when a 26” TV was REALLY REALLY BIG? 2) Check out the picture in the store on that particular model. ASK to see it with the motion smoothing turned off. If you don’t like it, keep trying different models until you come across one you do. Some are better at it than others, and it is more bothering to some people than others; it’s really a personal preference. I’m learning to live with it, trading in the awe of seamless clarity on special effects (watching the SHIELD helicarrier lift off from the water in The Avengers was jaw-dropping incredible) for the weird teleplay of people speaking. Unfortunately it’s the shape of things to come, and eventually we’re all going to have to adjust.