So; I'm shelving books, which Library Directors sometimes actually do, and I notice several books that I really want to read, if you don't get to them first.

They are:

Flat Broke in the Free Market : How Globalization Fleeced Working People by Jon Jeter (This may just make me depressed, or motivate me to be better informed and vote with more educated choices.)

Ripped : How the Wired Generation Revolutionized Music by Greg Kot (I just need to broaden my horizons.)

My Hope for Peace by Jehan Sedat, the wife of Anwar Sadat (I just want to know what this lady, close to the source, so-to-speak, has to say.)

Welcome to the Aquarium : a Year in the Lives of Children by Julie Diamond (This title got rave reviews in the publishing and education literature.)

The Spy Who Loved Us : the Vietnam War and Pham Zuan An's Dangerous Game by Thomas A. Bass. (Since I'm married to a Vietnam Vet and both spy stories and memoirs are a favorite of mine, I must read it.)

Little has been written about the place of the Jewish Kurds in Iraq. Certainly, when I read the subtitle to the book, My Father's Paradise : a son's search for his Jewish past in Kurdish Iraq I wondered what I could learn about the Kurds? Ariel Sabar has written about being an American child and teenager with a father who immigrated from Israel but told wonderful stories of growing up in Kurdish Iraq. His father and his grandfather and generations past spoke Aramaic, the language of Jesus. This exotic culture and language existed in almost isolation for years in the norther mountains of Iraq along side Muslims and Christians in the town of Zakho. What a fascinating journey this read was into the past; into a way of life of cooperation and mutual respect for other religions, and what an enlightening glimpse into the forces that create an environment where a culture and its language become extinct. Sabar traveled to Zakho in Kurdish Iraq and to Israel to meet some of the people and their descendants who knew his father as a boy and he shows us the world of the Aramaic speaking peoples past and present both in Iraq, Israel and America. And the story of his father's childhood in Jewish Zakho in Iraq is a revealing story indeed!

Da Chenn wrote Colors of the Mountain, a story of growing up in China during Mao's cultural revolution and after Mao's death. Before the cultural revolution, the family owned land, but it had been taken from them as a result of Mao's rule and Da often had nothing but old yams to eat for months before harvest. At Mao's death the rules suddenly changed and Da had a chance to change his life. It is a memoir of a boyhood full of spunk, mischief and love. He befriends a gang of hoodlums and learns English from an elderly Chinese Baptist woman, and vies for the opportunity to go to college. I checked out this book, read it and hope Da Chen writes a sequel.

A Rare Occasion

It is getting rarer and rarer that books arrive in the WNCC library. This is due to the economic downturn we are experiencing in the nation. It seems wiser to spend our budget on digital and electronic sources of information such as databases rather than information in paper form because more and more of our patrons are using digital sources to gain information. We do still order some books to gain access to information that is only published currently in paper format. Also, such sources give us more extensive information and information that we can access not only visually but also physically for longer periods of time. Should you be one of those that needs a good, informative book, we just shelved these:
Outliers : the story of success by Malcolm Galdwell;
Mission and Money : understanding the University by Burton A. Weisbrod, Jeffrey P. Ballou & Evelyn D. Asch;
Halliburton's Army : how a well-connect Texas oil company revolutionized the way America makes war by Pratap Chatterjee;
The Great Depression Ahead : how to prosper in the crash following the greatest boom in history by Harry S. Dent, Jr.;
Street Gang : the complete history of Sesame Street by Michael Davis.

Digital Age

Obviously, we are in a digital age. It is affecting our existence as well as the many other issues, like the economy, global warming (or not), tensions in the middle east, new types of families, etc. that we are finding we need to deal with or out national leaders are dealing with for us. I look at the titles of recently arrived books and realize that current authors are there with what they write and more. I'll list a few titles and let them speak for themselves.
You Tube for Business : online video marketing for any business by Michael Miller
Moral Machine : teaching robots right from wrong by Wendell Wallach & Colin Allen
Born Digital : understanding the first generation of digital natives by John Palfrey & Urs Gasser
7 Steps to Raising a Bilingual Child by Naomi Steiner, MD
First Born Advantage : making your birth order work for you by Dr. Kevin Leman
The Trophy Kids Grow : how the millennial generation is shaking up the workplace by Ron Alsop
The Self-esteem Trap - raising confident and compassionate kids in an age of self-importance by Polly Young-Eisendrath, PhD

Books you can see, smell and touch!

Books! Who reads books anymore, the kind you can hold, feel the slick cover, see the illustrated cover, smell the paper pages and sometimes the print? I have approximately 75 newly arrived and ready to be shelved books that look so intriguing. Danger's Hour has caught my eye. I see the subtitle is, the story of the USS Bunker Hill and the Kamikaze Pilot who crippled her. If I were into war stories, history, intrigued by the what kind of person made a Kamikaze Pilot, that would be a must read. There are other titles that catch my eye: So Sexy So Soon by Diane Levin, Ph.D. and Jean Kilbourne, Ed.D; Dangerous Business, the risks of Globalization for America by Pat Choate; The Either/OR Investor by Clark Winter; Anti Cancer, a new way of life by Dr. David Servan-Schreiber; The Day After He Left Iraq by Melissa Leligman. There's more. Come see them, feel them, smell them, check them out and read a book.