What’s Happening at Cheshire Library in January

/ cheshirelib / 2 Comments

Happy New Year! We hope one of your resolutions is to visit the library more this year, check out some of the programs we’ve got coming up in January!

Crafternoons (for grades K-6)

Tuesday Jan 2, 2018, 4:00  –  4:45 PM
 Drop-in for seasonal and fun crafts for kids!  Materials will be provided by the library, no registration required.

Bring Your Own Crafts (for Adults)

Thursday Jan 4, 2018, 6:00  –  8:00 PM

Coloring, stitching, drawing, stamping, scrapbooking, if it’s crafty, bring it in!  Come for a relaxing and de-stressing night of crafting. We will meet most every first Thursday of the month. There will be plenty of room to spread out for your crafts.  Some supplies will be provided for this adult program. Registration is required.

 

Cookbook Club: Slow Cooker

Wednesday Jan 10, 2018, 6:30  –  8:00 PM

What better way to connect with your fellow humans than by breaking bread together? To our January Cookbook Club meeting, bring a slow-cooker dish, along with copies of your recipe(s), and the cookbook(s) you used.  Must be at least 18 years of age or older to participate.  By registering for the program, participants acknowledge that they may choose to consume food that has not been prepared in a commercial kitchen.

Introduction to Microsoft Word

Part 1 – Thursday Jan 11, 2018, 12:30 PM  –  2:30 PM

Part 2 – Thursday Jan 18, 2018, 12:30 PM  –  2:30 PM

This class will provide an introduction to Microsoft Word and is divided into two sessions. Registration is required.

  • You will learn basic navigation skills to effectively use the Microsoft Word program.
  • Create a simple document.
  • Edit text and check spelling errors.
  • Format the document.
  • Insert a picture; change font formatting and much more.

Library After Hours: Spirits Alive!

Friday Jan 12, 2018, 6:00  –  7:00 PM

This month Library After Hours is hosting the Cheshire Historical Society’s Spirits Alive show! Five spirits from the past will be at the library to tell their stories. If you missed this sold-out show in October, now is your chance to experience some of the tales from the grave. By turns funny, sad, and thought-provoking, you’ll delight in these live performances. Please note, the lobby and children’s room will be open to the public but the lower level of the library will not.  Pizza, snacks and drinks will be available for sale from the Friends of the Library.  There is no admission fee, but there is a suggested donation of $5 per family to help offset costs. Seating is limited, registration is required.

Zumba for Adults

  • Wednesday Jan 17 – 2:00-3:00
  • Wednesday Jan 24 – 2:00-3:00
  • Wednesday Jan 31 – 2:00 -3:00

Burn calories and have fun doing it! Our Zumba class is open to adults of any skill or fitness level and is designed to teach the basic dance steps and easy to follow movements. Registration is required.

Zumba for Kids

  • Wednesday Jan 17 – 3:00-3:30
  • Wednesday Jan 24 – 3:00-3:30
  • Wednesday Jan 31 – 3:00-3:30

Perfect for younger Zumba fans!  Zumba Kids feature kid-friendly routines. This class helps develop a healthy lifestyle and incorporate fitness as a natural part of children’s lives by making fitness fun.

Goal Setting

Wednesday Jan 17, 2018, 6:00  –  7:30 PM

Are you struggling in one area of your life, or maybe more?  Do you know why?  Would you like to learn how to identify what your goals are and then how to take the steps to attain those goals?  Certified Life Coach Fiona Bain brings her sense of humor and love for life to help others become empowered in their own lives, to take steps to reach their goals and relieve their anxiety about what steps they want to take next. Registration is required.

Wake up Your Thyroid- Naturally Improve Thyroid, Energy and

Metabolism

Thursday Jan 18, 2018, 6:30 PM

Dr. David DeRosa, D.C., Clinical Nutritionist will discuss:

  •  Why half of all thyroid disorders go misdiagnosed.
  • The two missing nutritional links no one talks about.
  • Learn simple steps you can take to promote balance in your thyroid.

Registration is required.

Trivia Night

Wednesday Jan 24, 2018, 6:00  –  8:00 PM

Come by yourself or bring your friends. Test your knowledge from general categories, including pop culture, current events, history, music, and of course literature! It’s all For Pride, Not Prize.  Registration required for this adult program beginning January 10.

Introduction to PowerPoint

Part 1 – Thursday Jan 25, 12:30  –  2:30 PM

Part 2 – Thursday Feb 01, 12:30  –  2:30 PM

This class will provide introduction to Microsoft PowerPoint and is divided into two sessions. Registration is required. You will learn to:

  • Create a new presentation.
  • Modify presentation.
  • Add and edit text.
  • Insert clipart images and shapes to slides.
  • Add sound and video to a slide presentation and more…

Movement For Your Busy Life

Thursday Jan 25, 2018, 6:30  –  7:30 PM

In this fast-paced world it seems impossible to fit in any kind of exercise or movement into our work day. Mary Hurley, holistic health coach and certified personal trainer, will teach you a series of breathing techniques, stretching and strengthening movements that can be done throughout your work day with no special equipment. Registration is required.

Valentine Cards

Monday Jan 29, 2018, 6:00  –  7:30 PM

One of the many joys of the Valentine’s Day is sending cheerful cards to the ones you love.  Join Sue Bernier and create beautiful Valentine cards. You will use rubber stamps, ink and Stampin’ Up products to create your cards.  All levels are invited to join.   Registration is required.

 

 

 

Our staff’s favorite books of 2017

/ Louise / Leave a comment

What was the best book you read in 2017? This is the question I posed to my fellow staff members at CPL. Interestingly, I got no duplicate answers! We have a wide variety of reading preferences among our staff, which means there’s something for everyone in this list. Maybe your next great read is below:

Our Library Director Ramona  picked the audiobook edition of  News of the World by Paulette Jiles, read by Grover Gardner. In the aftermath of the Civil War, an aging itinerant news reader agrees to transport a young captive of the Kiowa back to her people in this exquisitely rendered, morally complex, multilayered novel of historical fiction.

Teen Librarian Kelley really liked Dusk or Dark or Dawn or Day by Seanan McGuire. In this urban fantasy, Jenna, who died  too soon, works to regain the years that were lost to her. But something has come for the ghosts of New York, something beyond reason, beyond death, beyond hope; something that can bind ghosts to mirrors and make them do its bidding. Only Jenna stands in its way.

Bill is our Head of Adult Services, and he picked the Bruce Springsteen autobiography Born to Run as his favorite read of 2017. In 2009, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band performed at the Super Bowl’s half-time show. The experience was so exhilarating that Bruce decided to write about it, which is how this extraordinary autobiography began. Springsteen traces his life from his childhood in a Catholic New Jersey family and the musical experiences that prompted his career to the rise of the E Street Band and the stories behind some of his most famous songs.

Children’s Librarian Lauren went with The Sun is Also a Star, a young adult novel by Nicola Yoon.  In this story Natasha, whose family is hours away from being deported, and Daniel, a first generation Korean American on his way to a prestigious college admissions interview, cross paths in New York. They unexpectedly fall in love during an intense day in the city.

 

More books our staff loved last year:

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas,  Winter of the Gods by Jordanna Max Brodsky, Evicted by Matthew Desmond, All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, Illusion Town by Jayne Castle,  The Purloining of Prince Oleomargarine by Mark Twain and Philip Stead, Border Child by Michael Stone, Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult, Letters from Skye by Jessica Brockmole, Where’d You Go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple, Devil in Spring by Lisa Kleypas, The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman, Glass Houses by Louise Penny

Twelve Books for Christmas

/ Mary / Leave a comment

The Cheshire Library has a lot of new books to help brighten your holiday. Here’s a sampler:

1. Christmas in a Cowboy’s Arms (Romance)

A Christmas anthology. Each story features rugged cowboys, the women who’ve lassoed their hearts…and the Christmas miracles that bring them together. Whether it’s a lonely spinster finding passion at last…an infamous outlaw-turned-lawman reaffirming the love that keeps him whole…a lost and broken drifter discovering family in unlikely places…a Texas Ranger risking it all for one remarkable woman…two lovers bringing together a family ripped apart by prejudice…or reunited lovers given a second chance to correct past mistakes…a Christmas spent in a cowboy’s arms is full of hope, laughter, and―most of all―love.

2. Christmas with Southern Living 2017 (Cookbook)

For 2017, Christmas with Southern Living is completely new, with all of the menu and décor ideas that you’ve come to expect, along with more than 100 recipes especially created for holiday cooking, baking, entertaining, and gift giving. This year’s edition includes menus and decorating ideas for every corner of your home, as well as tips and tricks on surprising ways to use leftovers, serve dishes, and more!

3. The Twelve Slays of Christmas by Jacqueline Frost (Mystery)

When Holly White’s fiancé cancels their Christmas Eve wedding with less than two weeks to go, Holly heads home with a broken heart. Lucky for her, home in historic Mistletoe, Maine is magical during Christmastime — exactly what the doctor prescribed. However,  her plan to drown her troubles in peppermints and snickerdoodles is upended when local grouch and president of the Mistletoe Historical Society Margaret Fenwick is bludgeoned and left in the sleigh display at Reindeer Games, Holly’s family tree farm.

4. Home for Christmas by Holly Chamberlin (Fiction)

At first glance, Nell King’s cozy home in Yorktide, Maine, seems a step down from the impeccably decorated Boston house she shared with her husband. But in the six years since he abruptly left to marry another woman, Nell and her almost-grown daughters have found real happiness and comfort here. Now, faced with what may be their last Christmas together,  Nell is eager to make this holiday picture-perfect. But there’s a complication–and an opportunity . . . Nell’s first love, now a successful novelist, is in town for a book signing.

5. A Scandal in Battersea by Mercedes Lackey (Mystery)

Psychic Nan Killian and Medium Sarah Lyon-White and their ward Suki are celebrating Chritmas with their friends, Doctor John Watson, and his wife Mary, both Elemental Masters. However,  there are dark forces, powers older than mankind, powers that come awake on Christmas Eve. Women begin disappearing in the dark of night.  The whispers only begin when they start to reappear—because when they do, they are no longer sane.  And when Nan and Sarah and the Watsons are called on to examine these victims, they discover that it was no ordinary horror of the streets that drove them mad.

6. The Usual Santas: A Collection of Soho Crime Christmas Capers (Mystery)

Nine mall Santas must find the imposter among them. An elderly lady seeks peace from her murderously loud neighbors at Christmastime. A young woman receives a mysterious invitation to Christmas dinner with a stranger. Niccolò Machiavelli sets out to save an Italian city. Sherlock Holmes’s one-time nemesis Irene Adler finds herself in an unexpected tangle in Paris while on an espionage assignment. Jane Austen searches for the Dowager Duchess of Wilborough’s stolen diamonds. These and other adventures  will whisk readers away to Christmases around the globe.

7. Christmas at Little Beach Street Bakery by Jenny Colgan (Fiction)

In the Cornish coastal village of Mount Polbearne, the Christmas season has arrived. It’s a joyous time for family, friends, and feasting, as decorations sparkle along the town’s winding streets and shop windows glow with festive displays. And in Polly’s Little Beach Street Bakery, the aroma of gingerbread cookies and other treats tempts people in from the cold. But holiday bliss soon gives way to panic when a storm cuts the village off from the mainland. Now it will take all of the villagers to work together in order to ensure everyone has a happy holiday.

8. Holiday Cookies: Showstopping Recipes to Sweeten the Season by Elisabet der Nederlanden (Cookbook)

This instant holiday classic is packed with 50 recipes, each gorgeously photographed and meticulously tested, along with dozens of decorating and packaging ideas. Filled with reimagined favorites like Giant Molasses Spice Cookies and Hazelnut Sandwich Cookies; confections like Peppermint Bark, Smoked Almond and Cacao Nib Brittle, and Dark Chocolate–Hazelnut Fudge; and detailed instructions for gorgeous gingerbread houses, cookie place cards, and edible ornaments, this is a cookie book like no other.

9. The Ghost of Christmas Past by Rhys Brown (Mystery)

When private detective Molly Murphy Sullivan and her husband, Daniel, are invited for Christmas at a mansion on the Hudson, they gratefully accept, expecting a peaceful and relaxing holiday season. Not long after they arrive, however,  they learn that the host couple’s young daughter wandered out into the snow ten years ago and was never seen again.  No ransom note. No body ever found.  Then, on Christmas Eve, there is a knock at the door and a young girl stands there. ‘I’m Charlotte,’ she says. ‘I’ve come home.’

10. Mr. Dickens and His Carol: A Novel of Christmas Past by Samantha Silva (Fiction)

Charles Dickens is not feeling the Christmas spirit. His newest book is a  flop, the critics have turned against him, and relatives near and far hound him for money. While his wife plans a lavish holiday party for their ever-expanding family and circle of friends, Dickens has visions of the poor house. Frazzled and filled with self-doubt, Dickens seeks solace in his great palace of thinking, the city of London itself. On one of his long night walks he meets the mysterious Eleanor Lovejoy, who propels him on a Scrooge-like journey that tests everything he believes about generosity, friendship, ambition, and love.

11. Hiddensee: A Tale of the Once and Future Nutcracker by Gregory Maguire (Fiction)

Gregory Maguire returns with an inventive novel inspired by a timeless holiday legend, intertwining the story of the famous Nutcracker with the life of the mysterious toy maker named Drosselmeier. Hiddensee imagines the backstory of the Nutcracker, revealing how this entrancing creature came to be carved and how he guided an ailing girl named Klara through a dreamy paradise on a Christmas Eve. At the heart of this mysterious tale hovers Godfather Drosselmeier– the ominous, canny, one-eyed toy maker made immortal by Petipa and Tchaikovsky’s fairy tale ballet– who presents the once and future Nutcracker to Klara, his goddaughter.

12. The Seven Days of Us by Francesca Hornak (Fiction)

It’s Christmas, and for the first time in years Olivia,  Emma and Andrew Birch’s elder daughter, will be joining them at Weyfield Hall, their aging country estate. But Olivia, a doctor, has just returned from treating an epidemic abroad, and she’s been told she must stay in quarantine for a week…and so too should her family. For the next seven days, the Birches are locked down, cut off from the rest of humanity.  In close proximity, not much can stay hidden for long, and as revelations and long-held tensions come to light, nothing is more shocking than the unexpected guest who’s about to arrive…

More Wine!

/ Louise / Leave a comment

I’m a wine novice. Or whatever comes below novice on the scale. I have no concept of what constitutes a good wine or a bad wine, as I rarely drink it myself. But with the holiday season zooming in, a bottle of wine is often a go-to for party contributions and gift-giving.  Very challenging for a wine neophyte.

While I’ll never be an oenophile (vocabulary points!), I’ve decided that maybe it’s time to learn a little about the nectar of the gods, the venerable vintage, the glorious grape. With a literal library of information at my fingertips, heading over to 641.22 seemed like the smart way to begin. How pleasantly surprised I was to find that there were plenty of books (eBooks & audiobooks, too) for newbies like myself!  Maybe the next time I’m in the wine aisle of my local liquor store, I’ll be able to do more than stare vaguely at the bottles and count off “eenie-meenie-minie-moe”.

Wine : an introduction by Joanna Simon 

The Everything Wine Book by Barbara Nowak

Wine Isn’t Rocket Science : a quick & easy guide to understanding, buying, tasting, & pairing every type of wine by Ophélie Neiman

Winewise : your complete guide to understanding, selecting, and enjoying wine by Steven Kolpan, Brian Smith, and Michael Weiss, the Culinary Institute of America

Wine All the Time : the casual guide to confident drinking by Marissa A. Ross

iPhone X, the Power in Your Pocket

/ emily100101 / 2 Comments

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I recently attended a conference in Atlantic City on the future of technology. Topics included self-driving cars, virtual and augmented reality, designer babies, nanobots, the implications of artificial intelligence, and more.

One session in particular really stayed with me: The Smart Phone.

Assuming you own one, have you thought much about your smart phone and how ridiculously powerful it is? It’s an equalizer for access to information. It’s an instant connection to the whole wide world.

Exactly 10 years ago, the first iPhone was released. Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone as a combination of three devices: a music player with touch controls, a revolutionary mobile phone, and a breakthrough Internet communicator. The days of duck-hunting on a flip-phone keypad were over. Do you remember typing “222” for the letter C? Not very convenient! The first iPhone boasted a big responsive touch screen, a proper keyboard, and nimble navigation.

Fast-forward 10 years later: The new iPhone X has facial recognition and you can shop online using your FACE to make payment. It has photography and film capabilities that rival a professional studio. It can instantly connect you to millions around the globe and shoot stunning HDR video in 4k resolution. It’s trained to know your voice and only respond to you. Just think about it. Imagine everything you can actually do with your smart phone right now and it will boggle the mind. At first the microphone was dumb, and then we taught it to understand us. The camera just took photos and then we taught it to recognize us. Imagine what’s in store for the iPhone 2027! It’s both exciting and scary.

The iPhone X starts at $1,000, and many are complaining that this is much too expensive. Consider for a moment this revelation from esteemed economist, Brad De Long. He ran some numbers on the iPhone X’s 256 GB of memory and 4.3 billion transistors in its A-11 processor and discovered that building an iPhone X in 1957 would have literally taken all of the money in the world.

Specifically, it would have cost 150 trillion of today’s dollars, which is one and a half times today’s global annual product. The CPU would have taken up a hundred-story square building 100 feet high and 2 miles long and wide. And to power the CPU, it would have drawn 150 terawatts of power—that is 30 times the world’s current generating capacity!

Meanwhile, in 2017, we’re carrying this device in our pockets. Pretty wild, isn’t it? $1,000 doesn’t seem so astronomical when you think about it in those terms.

If you’re interested in learning more about the history of the iPhone, check out these awesome books below. And as always, if you have any questions on your devices whatsoever, come to CPL’s Drop-in Tech Help! We hold it every week.

Jacket.aspx The One Device: The Secret History of the iPhone by Brian Merchant

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Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson