Book Review: Full Body Burden by Kristen Iversen

Have you ever heard of the Rocky Flats Plant in Jefferson County, Colorado? If not, don't worry, because after reading Full Body Burden by Kristen Iversen, you'll learn the history and the secrets behind the plant.  In Iversen's autobiography she writes about her childhood (from heartbreak to family secrets and her family experiences living near the plant), and of course the real agenda behind Rocky Flats. Most residents living near the plant believed they were making cleaning products, but secretly it was a working nuclear plant creating plutonium triggers for nuclear weapons.  Throughout the book she highlights specific workers and their experiences in the plant along with events happening in her family and is able to interweave these two topics into a wonderful narrative.   
Kristen Iversen's autobiography of her time growing up near the plant reads more like a work of fiction, and at times you have to remind yourself that these events really happened and that the people highlighted were real.  If you enjoyed the movie Erin Brockovich you will love reading this book about the secrets that a plant hid from its community and the outcomes that followed the residents and workers.   

This post was written by Dennis K.

Book Review: The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer

The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer is the story of six friends who meet at summer camp in 1974 and remain part of each others lives for the next few decades. It’s a summer camp for the arts so the book has plenty to say about creative people and what role creativity plays in their lives. Is it enough to be talented without ambition? Is it better to be talented and lucky, or wealthy? At what point do you "settle"? Smart and funny, The Interestings has well drawn characters, with dramatically different lives and relationships. They support each other, they drift apart. They share secrets and lies. They celebrate each other but they can also be jealous. Wolitzer has a remarkable eye for detail, and ear for dialogue. She captures a lot of life’s beautiful small moments and larger truths. The Interestings is aptly named, and a great addition to your summer reading list.


This post was written by Susie B.

Prizes and Fun are guaranteed this summer at MAPL!

Sign up now for our annual Adult Summer Reading Club. Every time you return a book, audiobook, or Playaway, you will have the chance to win fun weekly prizes such as gift cards, gift baskets, and much more! The more you read, the more chances you have to win. In order to win prizes you'll need to register for the club at the Circulation Desk.  You'll be assigned a number and receive a FREE tote bag courtesy of the Friends of the Library. While you're there pick up a brochure with details on all the amazing programs going on at the library this summer! Learn about Life At An Edwardian Manor (7/22 @ 7 pm) , the History of the Jersey Shore (7/31 @ 7 pm), or listen to the music of Gregory Irish (7/19 @ 7 pm), plus so much more.  The sooner you get started, the more chances you'll have to win. At the end of summer all the raffle tickets will be put back in the jar for a chance to win the Grand Prize - a Barnes & Noble NOOK Simple Touch with GlowLight (also from the Friends of the Library).

Good luck to everyone!

This post was written by library intern, Dennis Kuhn, with reference librarian, Jill Stafford.

Peeling the Onion

I like books that evolve and reveal, and like peeling an onion, show what’s underneath or what’s behind. Two of my favorite books of this sort are People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks and Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton.

People of the Book follows Hannah Heath, an Australian rare-book expert, as she restores the Sarajevo Haggadah, a beautifully illuminated Hebrew manuscript created in fifteenth-century Spain. Hannah has her own life story drama, but for me the real drama came as she peels apart the book and finds the relics that reveal the book’s rich history: an insect wing fragment, wine stains, salt crystals, and a white hair. Inspired by the Haggadah’s true story, each relic’s origin is imagined with touching, engrossing stories that bring each character to life. In fact, at times, I found myself more interested in the people of the book’s past than in Hannah’s story. Yet, there is mystery and intrigue afoot around one of the oldest Sephardic Haggadah’s in the world, and Hannah unwittingly is entangled in the connivance. I have read this book twice and still love it.

Forgotten Garden, I realize, is similar in that a book leads to a historical past. Found abandoned on a pier in Brisbane, Australia, a young girl carries a suitcase that contains some clothes and a single book of fairy tales. On her twenty-first birthday, the harbor master who adopted her tells her the truth of her origins. Feeling lost and foundation-less, Nell, as she was named, has little but the book to lead her to her true past. After many years of pondering her past, Nell decides she will finally travel to England but she is suddenly left to care for Cassandra, her granddaughter, and her search is thwarted. After Nell’s death, Cassandra finds clues that set her off on the hunt. Her pursuit leads to all the layers of Nell’s story being unpeeled. This book intertwines stories more “densely” than People of the Book does, in that chapters jump between time frames more rapidly and diversely, but each chapter is dated and each story is easily followed. Nell and her granddaughter Cassandra are both strong women, each with a tale I loved following. The unveiling of Nell’s childhood home will likely sound familiar to fans of The Secret Garden with some traces of Downton Abbey thrown in, as well. I have only read this book once but know it too will be read again.

This blog post was written by Adult Services Librarian, Jeanette Walker.

Book Reviews: New Computer Books

The Matawan Aberdeen Public Library has recently acquired some new books that are perfect for tech-geeks and aspiring learners alike. The books range from topics such as:

·         Communicating with Siri

·         Cloud Computing

·         Pinterest

·         Searching the Internet Effectively

·         Blogging

Talking to Siri by Erica Sadun is a great way to learn how to maximize your productivity with your iOS device. Learn how to teach Siri to recognize requests and take dictation more accurately, launch apps, look up movie reviews, send messages by voice, answer math and science problems, and more.

Cloud Computing in Easy Steps by David Crookes is a great way to get started in learning to utilize the cloud. Written in plain English and full of illustration, this book is easy to follow from Chapter 1. Learn how to use Google’s cloud services, such as Google Drive & Google Calendar, as well as services such as Microsoft’s SkyDrive, Dropbox, Apple’s iCloud, and more.

 

My Pinterest by Michael Miller can show you how to get started on the latest social network, Pinterest. Read how to create new pinboards, pin items such as intriguing digital media, comment on your friends’ pins, and more. This easy read is complete with easily understandable pictures that will enable you to immediately get the hang of the site.

 

Extreme Searcher’s Internet Handbook by Randolph Hock is an excellent tool for power users. Learn how to optimize your search engine of choice to instantly redirect you to your page of interest. Whether you’re looking for Historical Documents, Statistics, Maps, Professional Directories, or Databases, this book will assist you in learning to become an efficient Internet searcher.

Blog Inc.: Blogging for Passion, Profit, and to Create Community by Joy Deangdeelert Cho is an excellent start on the journey to blogging online. Learn how to design an attractive site, manage content, choose the right advertisements (if any), use great photos, and more. While the book may be text heavy, it is worth the read for any aspiring blogger who wishes to make a name for themself.

 

Hybrid Cloud for Dummies by Judith Hurwitz is a book primarily aimed at aspiring technical professionals. Concepts include information management with regards to hybrid clouds, identifying business value, delivering cloud services, and making it all work together seamlessly.

Come check out these books and our technical book selection today!

Skyler Lutz

Computer Technical Assistant

Matawan Aberdeen Public Library

Freegal = Free and Legal Music

I hope everyone who comes into the library or has visited our website is familiar with Freegal, the awesome service for downloading FREE mp3 music files that can be played on any music device.  Freegal has changed quite a bit since it's debut a couple of years ago. First of all, there is so much more music – over 3 million songs from 10,000 labels including the labels of Sony Music Entertainment. They have tens of thousands of popular artists in hundreds of music genres.  You can find albums such as:



Justin Timberlake’s The 20/20 Experience

Brad Paisley’s Wheelhouse

P!nk’s The Truth About Love


Children will enjoy albums such as:



Blues Clues Boogie

It's a Wiggly Wiggly World!

Dora the Explorer Party Favorites

There’s a Freegal app for the iOS devices available at the Apple Store as well as an app for the Android at the Google Play Store.

Finally, if you want to keep up with the latest offerings by Freegal, check out their blog here.

You can download three mp3 files every week.  All for FREE with your library card from the Matawan Aberdeen Public Library!

Enjoy!

Book review: Color Me Vegan

It’s not what you think.

If you’re like me, you made one or two New Year’s resolutions back in January. One of my resolutions was to incorporate more fruits and vegetables into my diet since it seemed like there were days when I was lucky if I could count three servings of fruits and vegetables in my meals. This was somewhat alarming since the American Cancer Society recommends we eat at least five servings EVERY DAY for optimal health.   It’s not that I didn’t like fruits and vegetables; I just don’t always know how to prepare them. 

To work on my resolution I did what any good librarian would do – I checked some vegetable oriented cookbooks out of the library (and downloaded some from Freading, but that’s another post).  One book especially caught my attention – Color Me Vegan by Colleen Patrick-Goudreau. I don’t aspire to become a vegan, but I figured adding grain and vegetable based meals would help me on my quest.

The first thing I noticed about Color Me Vegan is the way it’s organized.  The chapters are arranged by the colors of the rainbow and given names like Color Me Green and Color Me Red.  Patrick-Goudreau starts each chapter explaining the phytonutrients found in a particular colored vegetable, as well as the benefits of these phytonutrients.  Eating a wide range of colored vegetables means we get a full spectrum of phytonutrients that prevent diseases, strengthen the immune system, and slow the aging process.

What about taste? We’ve all been tempted by beautiful cookbooks only to be disappointed when the dish we cooked doesn’t turn out looking like the picture, or worse, the dish just doesn’t taste good. That’s the best thing about this book.  The dishes are delicious … and so easy! So far I’ve made about a half dozen of the recipes, a few of them multiple times. My new favorite breakfast is the “Green Smoothie” (p.129).  Yes, I was skeptical the first time I added raw spinach to a smoothie, but it’s absolutely true that you don’t taste it.  I now start my day having consumed a few servings of fruits and vegetables, probably more than I used to get in an entire day.  Another favorite recipe is the “Roasted Orange Beets with Tangerines” (p.49) from the Color Me Orange chapter of the book. Until I tried this salad recipe, I had always thought I didn’t like beets.  Even my very finicky father-in-law enjoyed this salad when we served it for Easter dinner!  This weekend I’ll be cooking “Shredded Brussels Sprouts with Apples and Pecans” (p.118). Yum!

I could go on praising the variety of recipes in this book, but I think you get the point.  The best recommendation I can give Color Me Vegan is that I actually purchased a copy for myself since I had renewed the book the maximum number of times and it needed to go back on the shelves for someone else to enjoy.

For once in my life I stuck to a New Year’s resolution and I feel great!