Just about the last thing I want to do in the summer is fire up the oven, but in cooler weather soup sounds better to me than salad.  There’s always my thrifty Surprise Soup – want the recipe?  Look in the refrigerator, see what’s left over, add chicken broth and if it’s good, surprise! Occasionally I want to make soup that’s a little more, ah, planned. Looking in our catalog for ideas, I found:

Love Soup: 160 all-new vegetarian recipes from the author of The Vegetarian Epicure

A collection of soup recipes, many vegan, from a renowned vegetarian cook. According to the reviews, it includes a pickle soup recipe. I’m not sure I want to eat that but I do want to read the recipe.

An exaltation of soups: the soul-satisfying story of soup, as told in more than 100 recipes

This book comes from a fascinating blog (formerly a website) called SoupSong. Patricia Solley has been writing about soup online for more than 10 years, mixing soup history and local culture in with the recipes. Want to make a soup that’s a little out of the ordinary? Try Yemen’s saltah or a Turkish balik corbasi.

Closer to home, you could head to Buckhead to eat at Souper Jenny, recently featured in the AJC . The article includes some of Jenny Levison’s recipes and we’ve got her cookbook at the Library.

And while you stir, you can sing:

I have to thank DCPLive’s own Jimmy for blogging about National Novel Writing Month last year because now the portmanteau “NaNoWriMo” is forever lodged into my brain. I ran out of time last year before I could reach the 50,000 word count (the number of words necessary to claim novel-writing success on the official website). Also, I just really couldn’t resist the urge to chuck the ideas that I grew frustrated with while racing the NaNoWriMo clock, thus completely missing the point of this particular exercise in freewriting and perseverance. So I’m going to give it another shot this year (though I’m now down by four days). So…thanks, Jimmy!

There are several books in DCPL to help you along the path to creating and finessing the novel of your dreams. Here are two that I like so far:

The Plot Thickens: 8 Ways To Bring Fiction To Life by Noah Lukeman: After you hammer out your NaNoWriMo novella, you may be wondering how to make it readable (and perhaps even enjoyable) to the masses. This is a great little book full of helpful hints and practical exercises for developing characters and plot.

Your Novel Proposal: From Creation to Contract by Blythe Camenson and Marshall J.Cook: Now that you’ve drafted a winning manuscript, take a look at this book. I really like the fact that it provides in-depth guides to conquering the more administrative aspects of authorship such as searching for an agent and submitting query letters. But first things first…let’s just make it through Novel Writing November and think about this other stuff later.

Happy Writing, ya’ll!

Halloween is upon us once again, and you can count on the Library to help you and your children get into the spirit.

The shelves are abound with Halloween books that are informational, spooky and just plain fun, including my new favorite picture book, Ghosts in the House by Kazuno Kohara. The adorable story about a young witch girl and her haunted house is filled with retro illustrations that make this book not only a wonderful addition to the Halloween genre, but picture books in general.

There are some great Halloween websites out there that are worth checking out. You can access a list of authoritative sites which include games, costume making, safety tips and more by visiting KidSpace @ The Internet Public Library.

The Dunwoody Library, Doraville Library and Wesley Chapel-William C. Brown Library will be hosting Halloween programs this week. Stop by and check out these fun, free programs!

How do you get in the Halloween spirit?

For the eleventh consecutive year, the Machine-Assisted Reference Section (MARS) of the Reference and User Services Association (RUSA) has put out a list of the best free reference websites. This annual series was initiated “to recognize outstanding reference sites on the World Wide Web”, a task which it has once again performed admirably. This year there are over two dozen sites listed, specializing in all manner of information.

Looking for a job? Check out the Dept. of Labor sponsored Careeronestop. It offers career resources and workforce information, such as salary data, where to file unemployment insurance, locations of career centers, self-assessment tools, and resume advice. The site also includes links to other useful resources, such as the online version of the Occupational Outlook Handbook.

Need help with measurement conversions? Try Onlineconversion.com, which boasts over 5,000 units and 50,000 conversions, lending credence to their claim to be able to “convert just about anything to anything else.” Whether you are attempting to convert Fahrenheit to Celsius or are interested in more esoteric conversions, like comparing clothing sizes across countries or finding our how much you’d weigh on different planets, this is the site for you.

Tired of defective online translation services mangling your intended message? Head over to Lexicool, a directory of “all” the online bilingual and multilingual dictionaries and glossaries freely available on the internet (currently numbering over 7000), many of which have been created by translators working in specialist fields.

Are you a sports fan? Sports-reference.com is “a combination of sites providing top notch statistics and resources for sports fans everywhere. Our aim is to be the easiest-to-use, fastest, most complete sources for sports statistics anywhere.” With sections devoted to baseball, basketball, football, hockey, and Olympic sports, the site has something for sporting fans of all varieties.

Or perhaps you are interested in procuring locally grown and/or organic food in your area. If so, you can utilize Local Harvest to find farmers’ markets, family farms, and other sources of sustainably grown food. Search by zip code or state, or use the interactive map. Other offerings include a monthly newsletter, recipes, and blogs by members.

Want more sites? Check out the combined index of lists from 1999-2008.

My lawn is pitiful.  It’s got brown spots, bare spots, pretty purple weeds, and holes.  I’m not very picky about lawns.  I figure that some shade of green is good, even if it’s rye grass.  I’m also a lazy gardener.  There are several websites to go to, including Georgia’s own Walter Reeves.  Books are also in great plenitude.  I’ve not read them, yet.  We even have DVDs such as Lawns in the Landscape.  I hope between the website, the books below, and the DVD I’ll figure out how to make my lawn pretty instead of pitiful.

The Organic Lawn Care Manual by Paul Tukey

The Lawn Bible by David Mellor

Easy Lawns edited by Stevie Daniels (I think this is the book for me)

Whatever your taste in books, if you’ve spent much time in a library or bookstore over the past 20 years it’s likely you’ve at least heard of Neil Gaiman. A successful author in a variety of different genres (including science fiction, fantasy, and horror, as well as graphic novels, books for children, and screenplays for television and film), he has been the recipient of numerous awards, most notably the Nebula, Bram Stoker, and World Fantasy Awards, as well as the 2009 Newbery Medal for The Graveyard Book (which also won the Hugo for best book and Locus award for best YA novel). He is listed in the Dictionary of Literary Biography as one of the top ten living post-modern writers, and two of his books (Stardust and Coraline) have been adapted into major motion pictures (we carry both adaptations in the DCPL catalog, and they can be located here, and here, respectively).

The website Shelfari (a literary oriented social networking site which allows members to build a virtual bookshelf to display books they’ve read) recently posted an article on Neil Gaiman and his personal library. The idea was, as stated by the author of the piece, “you can learn a lot about someone by seeing what’s on his or her bookshelf…[so] we thought it would be fun to take a look at what’s on the bookshelves of some of our favorite authors.”

Mr. Gaiman’s home library is impressive, both in terms of quantity and quality. A perusal of his bookshelves reveals a man with an eclectic and varied taste, exactly what one would expect from such a talented and wide-ranging author.

If you are interested in learning more about Neil Gaiman, his website offers a wealth of information about his life, work, and current activities. You can also check out his author profile on Shelfari or follow him on Twitter. And for those who have never read anything by him but are looking for a good place to start, allow me to recommend a couple of my favorites:

The Sandman graphic novel series is, in a word, brilliant. It has been critically acclaimed, being one of very few comics to ever make it onto the NY Times bestseller list as well as have been selected as one of Entertainment Weekly’s “100 best reads from 1983 to 2008“.  Although DCPL doesn’t carry the entire series, we do carry the first collection of issues I read, entitled The Doll’s House, which is a fine place to start exploring the series, as well as its  follow up installments: Dream Country and Season of Mists.

American Gods was awarded the Hugo and Nebula awards (among others) and tells the story of Shadow, an ex-con who learns upon his release from prison that both his wife and best friend died the previous day in a car accident, leaving him with no one to come home to. Offered a job as a bodyguard by a mysterious man named Wednesday, Shadow travels with him around the country, slowly learning of a weird and dangerous world he never knew existed, and the Gods, old and new, that inhabit it.

Check them both out. You won’t be disappointed.

When I ran across Vanessa Farquharson’s book, Sleeping Naked Is Green: How an Eco-Cynic Unplugged Her Fridge, Sold Her Car, and Found Love in 366 Days, I was intrigued.  While I don’t think I’ll be unplugging my fridge anytime soon (is that even possible in this heat?), selling my car (sorry, Jnai!), or looking for love (my husband wouldn’t approve), I am interested in living a greener life without going insane (or appearing that way).

I have tried to make small changes at home to be more green.  My husband and I haven’t done anything too drastic–although our families think our recent decision to cloth diaper our twins is a little extreme–but we’ve made minor adjustments here and there that (we hope) will reduce our carbon footprint and maybe save a polar bear or two from extinction.  We changed all our lightbulbs to compact flourescent bulbs, swapped to cloth napkins for everyday, replaced paper towels in the kitchen with dishrags and towels, and put a bucket in the shower to catch the water as it heats (which we then use to water our garden).  We also recycle and compost when we can.  But do we really have to stop eating at restaurants that use styrofoam take-out containers or stop using antiperspirants?

Although afraid of losing her cool hipster status and being mistaken for a hippie, or worse yet, a blogger, Ms. Farquharson took the plunge and began a daily blog about her changes in an effort to provide a humorous real-life view on the effect that living green might have on a regular everyday person.  All the while bearing a tiny, imaginary Al Gore on her shoulder,  she makes changes both small and large:  ”Switch to recycled paper towels,” “Lower the temperature on my water heater,” or “Sell my car.”  Some changes are a little more unusual (or just plain odd), such as “Skip gown at doctor’s office” or “Drip-dry dishes in dishwasher rack above houseplants.”

If you’d like to follow Ms. Farquharson’s continuing journey on the road to being green, check out her blog Green as a Thistle.  Interested in finding out your own carbon footprint and your impact on the environment?  Go to the EPA’s Household Emissions Calculator or The Nature Conservancy’s Carbon Footprint Calculator and get a personalized estimate.  Then maybe you, too, will decide to carry a totebag and give up on pajamas…

Know a child who loves to read? Give them a library book for their birthday by donating to the DeKalb Library Foundation. You can mark a special occasion by having a book plate with their name on it placed in a book purchased for their favorite library. The book plates can also celebrate anniversaries, retirements, weddings or a new baby.  A plate can be in honor of or in memory of a special person. An acknowledgement card is sent to the honoree, noting the occasion and your name.

The first bookplates were also pasted into donated books. In 1480, Brother Hildebrand of Biberach donated his books, accompanied by bookplates, to his monastery. Old bookplates are sought after by collectors and scholars for the beauty of their designs and the information they provide as to the provenance of a book.

What’s provenance? It means knowing the history or origin of an object. Future readers will check your book out from the library and know who made their reading possible. It’s a great gift for any bookworms you might know and a great way to support the Library!

Donation forms are available at your local library or on our website.

It’s Friday once again and today I thought we’d start off the weekend by introducing a simple game that generates charitable food aid while building your vocabulary! The game is called Free Rice, and it is a non-profit website run by the United Nations Food Program. Free Rice has two goals, to provide education to everyone for free, and to help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free. It works towards these goals by presenting visitors to the site with one word followed by a set of four possible definitions. Picking the correct definition allows you to move onto the next (more difficult) word and generates a donation of ten grains of rice. As the website notes, ten grains isn’t a particularly large amount, but when enough people play enough times, an enormous difference can be made in the lives of millions of those less fortunate all over the world. Since its inception in 2007 Free Rice has donated a total of 66,985,896,480 grains of rice! So the next time you have access to the internet and a few minutes to spare, consider spending them building up your vocabulary and helping to feed someone in need.

If you are interested in learning about the causes and possible solutions to the problem of world hunger, the library has several books in the catalog that can further inform you. A good book to start your exploration with is the well researched and argued Stuffed and Starved by Raj Patel. Check it out.

psst – yes, we know this has been written about on this blog before, but we thought it was time for a reminder!

While the movie adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are is not due to be released for another two months, there are plenty of Wild related things to keep our anticipation at bay and ensure that we will be ready to experience Spike Jonze’s movie to its fullest. If it has been awhile since you’ve read Sendak’s 1964 Caldecott winning book, you can check it out at the Library which has copies in English, Spanish and Chinese. If you haven’t seen the original movie trailer yet, which is pretty awesome, you can do so here.  And lucky us! A new trailer was released a couple of weeks ago, giving us a little bit more insight as to how they’ve taken a 10 sentence book and turned it into a feature-length film.

There are numerous people out there blogging about pretty much everything Wild related, but one of the coolest sites I’ve found is Terrible Yellow Eyes. The blogger was so inspired by Where the Wild Things Are that he set up a site that pays tribute to the book and its author. Artists from all over the world send in their own artistic reproductions of the book and the site is updated frequently.

The movie has been an enormous undertaking which has spanned many years and has involved hundreds of people. Check out Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are blog, We Love You So, to learn how the movie came to be.

And don’t forget to pre-order your Where the Wild Things Are figurines!

Do you have any fun Where the Wild Things Are sites to share?