Author Profile: Robyn Carr

/ Linda / Leave a comment

robyn carrRobyn Carr published her first book in 1978, but it took her 30 years to make the New York Times Best Seller List.  She is a pioneer of the small-town romance genre.

She married her high school sweetheart during the peak of the Vietnam War.  She studied nursing in college, but couldn’t practice because of their constant moving between military bases.  To occupy her time, she took up reading and fell in love with romances.  She feels romances are important because people need a safe place to deal with emotions they’re stuck with, and a book is a safe place to do that.  After much trial and error, she settled upon writing contemporary romances.  Her novels deal with real issues in a realistic manner.  She is strongly drawn to issues and causes that honor men and women who serve our country.  Her stories are about strong, capable women who have issues that every woman faces at some point in her life.

She is the author of the very popular Virgin River series.  It is a blend of romance and women’s fiction that entertains as well as addresses sensitive issues, such as domestic violence, health issues, and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.  It takes place in a fictional town in the Redwood forests of California.  The series centers around men of honor and the women they love.  The first book of the series, Virgin River, was published in 2007.  There are 20 books in the series.  They are:

  1. Virgin River
  2. Shelter Mountain
  3. Whispering Rock
  4. A Virgin River Christmas
  5. Second Chance Pass
  6. Temptation Ridge
  7. Paradise Valley
  8. Under the Christmas Tree (novella)(not available)
  9. Forbidden Falls
  10. Angel’s Peak
  11. Moonlight Road
  12. Midnight Confessions (novella)(not available)
  13. Promise Canyon
  14. Wild Man Creek
  15. Harvest Moon
  16. Bring Me Home for Christmas
  17. Hidden Summit
  18. Redwood Bend
  19. Sunrise Point
  20. My Kind of Christmas

Ms. Carr has spent most of 2012 writing a brand new series, Thunder Point.  It is set in a picturesque coastal community on the Oregon coast.  Like her Virgin River series, this series will make you laugh, sigh, and fall in love with a small town filled with people you’ll never forget.  Book one – The Wanderer – is out now.  It will be followed by The Newcomer in July and The Hero in September.

This Disc Won’t Play! (part 1, Fingering the Culprit)

/ Susan O. / 2 Comments

imagesYou’ve put in your favorite CD or DVD, and the stupid thing just won’t play!  It skips, it freezes, it pixelates into pretty colors, or the player spits it out and declares “Bad Disc!”  Your heart was set on that, and now you’re out of luck and your kids are getting cranky.

Don’t despair! The solution is often very simple. By far, the most common, annoying, easily fixable problem with disc materials is FINGERPRINTS.  Turn it over and look at the non-label side. It should look like a mirror.  Are there fingerprints?  Is coffee spilled on it? Or maple syrup (that’s happened)?  CLEAN THE DISC.

“But it’s a library disc!” you say.  “If I damage it, they’ll charge me!”  Don’t worry.  While discs are fragile, they’re more durable than you think.  Some of our discs have been used more than 150 times and still play fine. CDs and DVDs are made from polycarbonate, with a layer of foil (gold or aluminum) protected by a layer of lacquer.  That’s the same plastic as your eyeglasses!  General rule is, if it’s safe for your eyeglasses, it’s perfectly safe for a disc.  You can clean them with eyeglass cleaner, water, hand sanitizer, baby wipes, even liquid dish soap, but *make sure you clean them with a liquid*.  You can even rinse them under the tap if you must. To dry them, you can use a glass-cleaning cloth, a clean piece of flannel, or in a pinch, a clean cotton dishcloth or Tshirt.

DON’T: rub the mark with something dry, use a paper towel, newspaper, or rough cloth.  All these things will leave fine scratches on the polycarbonate.  If the laser can’t penetrate the polycarbonate layer, it can’t read your disc.  You can clean them with Windex or window cleaner, but repeated exposure to the ammonia in them can eventually dull and damage your disc. Don’t run them through the dishwasher.

cd-cleaningClean the disc, try it again.  Audio CDs (music or audiobooks) are very forgiving.  They can look scratched and still play fine. Sometimes it’s the player: what plays perfectly in your computer or your cd player won’t play right in your car. DVDs, with their video component, are much fussier, and Blu-rays the fussiest of all.  If it still won’t play right, bring it back, but stick a note on it or tell us, and we’ll give it a more thorough diagnostic.  Be especially careful with those awful double-sided DVDs – always hold them from the very edge, or you’ll be cleaning one side while dirtying the other.

With a little polish and a little luck, you’ll be singing along again in no time!

Mining Books to Map Emotions

/ Deborah R. / Leave a comment

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So what were the happiest years in the last century?  I was driving home on April Fool’s Day  listening, as always, to NPR when this fascinating segment aired on analyzing the use of emotional words in books over the last century. A bunch of researchers in England decided that it would be interesting to use a computer program to track the use of hundreds of “emotion” words  from millions of books published over the last 100 years and digitized by Google.  All kinds of books were included from novels to technical manuals.  (Who knew that technical manuals had emotional content!) The original idea was to see if certain words became more popular at certain times, but the researchers didn’t really expect much.  However, what they discovered surprised them.

Check it out for yourself!  Read (or listen to) the the rest of the article on the NPR Health Blog.

BOOK REVIEW: Sand Castle Bay by Sherryl Woods

/ Linda / Leave a comment

Sherryl Woods is a master storyteller when it comes to bringing small town living alive with warmth, emotions, and character-driven stories.

Sand Castle Bay is the first book in her new trilogy Ocean Breeze.  Emily Castle, the youngest of three sisters, is a very successful interior designer on the West Coast.  She left her life in North Carolina to follow her dreams.  She also left behind the man she loved, Boone Dorsett, a successful restaurateur.  A hurricane barreling straight towards her grandmother’s home has Emily heading back to North Carolina.

Neither Emily nor Boone were looking forward to seeing each other, but it was inevitable.  There is still a lot of built-up emotion between the two.  The hurt, betrayal, and misunderstandings of ten years ago still lingers.  The author weaves a captivating story of these two characters working out their differences to get a second chance at love.  There are complications thrown in – Boone’s young son and his ex in-laws – and trust issues, and it is all told with such attention to detail you feel you are part of the story.  The supporting characters draw you in and make you feel like part of the community.  The author beautifully sets the background for Emily’s two sisters and their stories, and I can’t wait to read the next two books in the trilogy.

Books for LEGO Lovers

/ Sharon Tyler / 1 Comment

Do you still love LEGOs? Does someone in your family love LEGOs? They are more then just a great toy, and a danger when walking barefoot. LEGOs can be used to make engineering marvels, works of art, and just about anything you can imagine as long as you have all the right pieces. There are many books that demonstrate the wide-spread love of LEGOs. Here are some of the books I recommend for LEGO fans for all age groups.

Amazing ABC

There are board books for the youngest fans. Some that can be used to help teach the ABC’s, like the Amazing ABC: an Alphabet Book of Lego Creations by Sean Kenney,while others just make all of us marvel at the effort the creators have put into creating the images used to illustrate the books.  There are also easy readers that show off some fabulous LEGO work, and use some favorite characters from books and television to capture the imagination. Cool Castles, books that feature Star Wars characters built from LEGOs, as well at the LEGO Ninjago series, which are popular for emerging readers.

The LEGO Book

Books can be found that simply feature the wide variety of pieces that LEGO creates, including ideas for things to build and encyclopedias that list and describe the specific LEGO pieces created around a specific book or movie series. The LEGO Book shares the history behind LEGO bricks. It includes a timeline which highlights key moments in LEGO history and includes new and updated information about LEGO Star Wars, LEGO Ninjago, LEGO Friends, and much more. There are also the Lego Harry Potter book,  LEGO Star Wars Character Encyclopedia, and many more to feed any mind eager to learn about the seemingly endless supply of LEGOs.

Simple Machines

For our builders that do not want to just look at all the amazing things others have done, but want some inspiration and instruction on how to expand their own building abilities, there are books for them as well!  You can study the step by step images and create your own Simple Machines, Wheeled Wonders, and Fantastic Contraptions.

If all this LEGO fun and wonder is not enough for you, then stop by the library and check out the creations the members of the Builder Brigade have built. This is a monthly program, for children ages 7 and up which allows children to work alone or in groups in order to use their creativity and design buildings, creatures, and more using Lego and Mega blocks. For more information, news, and photos take a look at the Builder’s Brigade Blog here.