Getting to the Soul of the Matter

Lorain County Reads recently chose Soul of a Chef by Michael Ruhlman as their next big read. Ruhlman honed his career writing about topics he had absolutely no knowledge of, like Wooden Boats in 2002, and Walk on Water in 2003. Drawn into the world of craftsmen whose work is defined by the tools of their trade, be it scalpel or jig saw, he quickly gets to the heart of the matter; the soul of what elevates a job into a passion.

I met Michael after sending him an invitation to speak at the Lorain County JVS. It helped that I had my HACCP certification and ServSafe papers along with gram bags of agar and lecithin powders in small bags in my car, don’t ask. But credibility is an amazing thing and a simple letter ended with me being able to help out during the book signing after his presentation. His young audience asked lots of questions, and Ruhlman answered each one, relaying information about culinary school, writing, and most of all, the “soul” needed to compete successfully, no matter what your field.

Months later he attended a local dinner and shared his knowledge of Charcuterie, preparing meats used in a farm to table dinner that evening. Ruhlman slips quietly from being a teacher to being a student, a writer’s skill that keeps him in good company as students stood shoulder to shoulder in the kitchen that day preparing forcemeats and discussing brining techniques.


“Soul of a Chef” is three separate stories, each revolving around a separate chef. You’ll come away with an inside look into the process of creativity and sustaining a momentum that allows some people to succeed when others are watching the clock.


Ruhlman is best when writing on food and those who love it. “The Making of a Chef” was a priceless view inside not only the St. Andrew’s kitchen at Hyde Park but inside the psyche of a possessed profession. Dr. Tim Ryan, president of CIA said during a speech “Chefs are all pyromaniacs at heart; we’ve just found an acceptable outlet for our passion”. The descriptions of student life read like scripture to aspiring chefs and Ruhlmans’ ability to tap into that passion makes him a great choice for a Lorain County Reads author.

Ratio is probably one of the first books to have its own app, available July 2010, and his Elements of Cooking, a culinary take-off of Strunk and White’s version, continues to be a top seller. I do have a problem with his recent merge with Blue Sky, offering sponsored products to customers who follow his weekly deals, this week was a poached egg spoon for $45, but I do still follow his blog.

Lorain County can use a little passion, something that seems to be lost as of lately. Hopefully Ruhlman’s book can ignite a spark in readers that will light up an otherwise dull day….is it five o’clock yet? I'm thinking I need that egg spoon.

Coming soon to a shelf.....right here!

Check out some of the new books we'll be adding to our collection.  If you think you have to be a kid to enjoy some of the great Juvenile or Young Adult fiction out there, well think again. 

Timeless by Alexandra Monir (YA MON) combines a very cool piece of jewelry along with just enough romance to make this time traveling drama appeal to all ages.  This book is a perfect winter retreat where Venice Beach meets old money Manhatten and leads to a young woman learning the truth to some old family secrets.  Fantasy meets historical fiction meets urban drama! 


Guardian of the Dead by Karen Healey (YA HEA) made the list of 2011 Best Fiction for Young Adults.  Healey's first book received starred reviews from all the trade journals and who could argue.  Creepy yet funny, sexy and smart, this book transends the Young Adult bookshelf and appeals to anyone who likes a good mystery with a fantasy slant.  Find out what connects a string of morbid murders with  fairy siblings and an ancient curse.

Garnering an award for 2011 Best non-fiction book is Jill Rubalcaba's Every Bone Tells a Story.  Here a real life Indiana Jones explains how the advent of new technology views how scientists study the past and how we interpret our ancestors.  Meet interesting characters like the Iceman, Turkana Boy and Kennewick Man up close and personal. 

Vibes by Amy Kathleen Ryan (YA RYA)isn't your ordinary story of high school angst. Sure it's tough being a high school senior.  Kristi worries about her weight, the new boy in school, and her parents relationship.  Add to the fact that she is all a psychic and can read minds and you've got a whole new slant on a familiar story.  If you''ve walked the hall just knowing that everyone is thinking or looking at you, then you'll be entertained by Kristi’s prickly demeanor and empathize with her image issues.  And yes, she loves opera.

If you've enjoyed other books by Jane Smiley, like The Georges and the Jewels or Horse Heaven, you may want to venture to the Young Adult section to pick up her newest book, A Good Horse.  Be prepared for lots of background on horse grooming, horse training, horse boarding... in fact if you're a horse lover then you'll enjoy this book about 13-year old Abby who must stand up to protect her colt Jack.  When facts come to light that Jack may be the offspring of a stolen mare it's up to Abby to do the right thing.Trash by Andy Mulligan(YA MUL) takes place in an unnamed third-world country in the not so distant future.  The story line of a group of kids picking through garbage dumps looking for items they can sell lends itself to a sort of Treasure Island meets Slumdog Millionaire drama when suddenly a wealthy business owner loses something that he'll pay dearly to get back.  Suddenly a ramshackle group of boys realize their greatest dreams are within reach.  This would be an excellent book discussion choice with lots of talk points. 

If you liked Impossible by Nancy Werlin then her latest book, Extraordinary (YA WER), should be at the top of your list.  Phoebe, a member of the wealthy Rothschilds family, befriends Mallory, an awkward new girl in school, and it doesn't take long before the truth to come out.  Mallory has secrets that will change Phoebe's world and when Mallory's brother shows up it's no wonder he seems to have a strange hold over what Phoebe is thinking and doing.  Fairy lit meets urban high school drama-rama.

If you're looking for more ideas check out some of the readers advisory pamphlets located in the Youth Services section.  Flyers titled Books With Beat, New Baby in the House, and the latest Zombie Invasion might just help point you in the direction of your next great read.

January means Organizing

It’s no surprise to me that the library’s two copies of The Organization Map by Pam McClellan are both missing. Everyone feels that they need more organization in their lives, perhaps a fleeting glimpse of a stress free life knowing your paperclips are sorted by color and size gives us a false sense of security and safety and we run out to find any magazine book or web site that can help us achieve that goal. Sure, my life would be great, I’d sleep nights, have time for filing my nails and reading endless books, if only I could have my closet revamped by Martha Stewart.


January offers relief from the hectic holiday shopping and family gatherings that have many of us making reindeer centerpieces that include the Halloween pumpkins that were still on the back porch, and in my case the flat of Mother’s Day pansies I never had time to plant and an Easter Egg wreath that looked quite festive after a coating of silver spray paint.

Organizing Your Day: time management techniques that will work for you by Sandra Felton and Marsha Sims notes that well-managed time reduces stress, helps you accomplish more in less time, and most importantly, gives you greater freedom to enjoy doing what you love. I suppose that’s what gets everyone thinking that a new year brings new hope for new ideas. I was all excited to look at new furniture and decorate my living space to look like the cover of a Decorating Den. But I was disappointed in Christopher Lowell’s Seven Layers of Design when I realized he was talking about paint, flooring and texture when I had in mind seven years of crappola and moving boxes that hadn’t been opened in ten years.
The Power of Slow by Christine Hohlbaum promises to reduce stress, help you accomplish more in less time and give you greater freedom to enjoy life. Sounds like a plan. I was excited to slow down the pace and have time for a real vacation until I read the inside front cover flap where tips listed included “When working on a project on your computer, close all the windows, with the exception of the one you need to do the job at hand.” What ever happened to multi-tasking? Currently I have six windows open including a book review, sports article for the Plain Dealer, a press release for On Demand Studios, a business web page I’m updating and the syllabus for an online class. I’m convinced that Hohlbaum is just a slacker is probably enjoying the fruits of publishing success while multi-tasking on a beach somewhere probably in cahoots with Dave Crenshaw, author of The Myth of Multitasking.

For those of you who still hold out hope for household organization try Cut the clutter and stow the stuff: the Q.U.I.C.K. way to bring lasting order to household chaos, edited by Lori Baird. This book includes over 1200 tips and strategies compiled from experts including how to tackle those piles of papers taking up valuable counter space. Making Room: Finding Space in Unexpected Places by Wendy A. Jordan may open your eyes to how you can make better use of space you have to tame the clutter monster. Turn that shelf in the bathroom into a bookcase or why not make that space under the staircase into an office niche?


And if crowded closets and barricades of boxes in the basement just seem like too much, consider simplifying with It's all too much: an easy plan for living a richer life with less stuff by Peter Walsh. And if you’re sorting through your piles of stuff and happen to find an overdue library book called The Organization Map please bring it back….maybe it’s the key to the life I’ve been looking for.

Patrons of Christmas Past

Several years ago a librarian in Ludington, Michigan, wrote a fictionalized account of life at the library. She was immediately fired. It seems that while her tales of various community characters was meant to be an eye-opening yet fun portrayal of working in a public environment, her boss didn’t think it helped her case when she put a photo of the library on the book cover. Even if the names were changed, everyone recognized everyone else, and so her real story began. It seems that free speech is great, until someone is speaking about you.

Sally Stern-Hamilton committed the ultimate library sin. She crossed the line of confidentiality, even though she thought she had covered her tracks, her descriptions of library patrons and scenes of everyday life at the library broke the rules when it came to library customer service. She put herself and her motives before the needs of the patron.

Working at a library, or any public service position, is not a job where you can talk much about your day. It is not a place where you will get a pat on the back or a medal for good conduct because your story is always someone else’s story and usually it’s a story that’s not meant to share.

The building itself is quiet, the voices of patrons past are silent yet a spirit fills the library with shadows of people who have scanned the shelves or looked for someone to guide them to that piece of information that would bring them some peace.



“I need to find out about mesothelioma”, one woman asked. “The doctor says my husband has mesothelioma but I couldn’t understand the diagnosis. Can you help me?”



“I need the number for the closest military recruiting office. It doesn’t matter which one.”


How do I find out about filing for Emancipation from my parents? The court said I could get a form here.”


“Where are your books about pregnancy?”


“Can you help me find a free lawyer? I don’t have money to pay my ambulance bill and I may lose my house.”


“Where do you go when you can’t pay your heating bill?”



The laughter of a hundred children is not enough to drown out the voice that asked for poems that could be read at a child’s funeral. A boy who once came to check out “The Great Gatsby”, now waits in a hospital for an operation to fix his leg, broken in three places in an accident. His friend who was driving died. A mother waits at the window for a child who won’t be home for Christmas, ever again. People searching for answers, searching for help, pass from door to desk and back again.


The navy recruiter pulls up to the door and someone slips the boy a twenty dollar bill because he has no other money in his pockets and maybe he’ll need lunch.


And how was your day at work? Fine...same old stuff.


The library is silent, and still.

Star Review

Maybe I’m just a tough critic but after years of writing book reviews for School Library Journal, this month’s issue contains only the second “starred review” I’ve ever submitted. Because of Mr. Terupt by Rob Buyea was only the second book that I thought deserved to be elevated to the status of “starred”. The first book I ever awarded a star to was Chicken Boy by Frances O’Roark Dowell, and that was in 2005.


Because of Mr. Terupt is a great book, well written, with believable characters and a theme reminiscent of Leave it to Beaver and Welcome Back Kotter all rolled into one. Each chapter is a separate narrative by one of the seven students in Mr. Terupt’s classroom. From the students’ distinct voices, readers come to understand the different personalities and backgrounds that define them. The chapters are short, some less than a page, each skillfully arranged to keep readers moving headlong into the conclusion.

But why only two starred reviews in a decade? With all the books being published you would think it would be easy to fill a library with award winning literature. But take a look at the publishing business and how it has evolved. Michael Larson, author of How to Get a Literary Agent, claims that the publishing business is changing faster and more radically than at any other time in history. Globalization is shaping the future of media and having profound effects on what is available at your library, book store, and cinema.


Reed Publishing sends me books every month. As one MLIS student told me, “Just give them all a star review, that way you get more free books”. This was what her professor was doing and he encouraged his students to reap the wealth of free books. I’m wondering if she ever noticed how many of these fiction books had characters using a lot of British slang and Australian settings.


Enter the Six Sisters of Publishing. During the first half of the century hundreds of publishers and imprints were formed. Mergers during the last ten years have resulted in the loss of 90% of the publishing imprints. Of the six big houses that remain only one is a US owned company. Here’s the breakdown in simple terms:



• Bertelsmann AG (German) owns 70 imprints including Random House, Knopf, Ballantine, Crown, Pantheon, and Vintage



• Simon & Schuster (US) includes Pocket Books, Free Press, Scribner, Touchstone

• Hachette Book Group (France) owns Little Brown and Company and Grand Central Publishing



• HarperCollins (Australia) includes Harper Paperbacks, Harper Mass Market, HarperOne



• Penguin Group (United Kingdom) includes Penguin, Putnam, Viking, Berkley, Signet, Plume, Grosset



• Macmillan (Germany) includes Henry Holt and Company, St. Martin's Press


Even my latest star reviewed book was a re-release of a previously published book. If it was ever turned into a movie that Paramount would produce and Mattel could manufacture the toys for and a publisher could re-release yet again the same book but with a glossy movie tie-in cover, then perhaps more people might get there hands on a good book.

While global forces dictate what we will read the genre of books sold show how media tie-ins affect sales. Thanks in part to Stephenie Meyer and her Twilight series, 17% of books sold in 2009 were related to vampires and the paranormal. When I first started reading Charlaine Harris, back in 2000 her characters Lily Bard and Aurora Teagarden had no idea that Sookie Stackhouse would come on the scene some ten years later becoming the inspiration for HBO’s True Blood series. Harris herself had a total of nine titles in the top 100 sellers in one year.

The mother daughter Cast team had six books in the top 100 in 2009, all part of their House of Night series. Add some zombies in the mix with Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith and it would make sense that almost 20% of books being purchased have some walking dead factor.


I guess that reading books, where ever they are published and by whoever owns the company, is not a lost art. But having a character that is dead would help your chances of getting published. Write a book with a vampire or a zombie as the main character, add in a British accent and a Canadian setting….then your sitting on a best seller.

There's an app for that

Where there’s an app there’s probably a book for that. When that need hits you to check if a book is on the shelf at your local library, consider downloading The Library Company’s (TLC’s) new LS2 mobile app that allows you to interface with your school of public library anywhere you have a wireless connection. Currently the app has only been released for Apple’s iPhone, iPad, and iTouch but the developer claims the app will be available for the Android market soon.

Reviewers claim that even the newest versions have some bugs still to work out and may not interface with your local library if they do not subscribe to the TLC format. Sure, you can always just go online to the library’s website and search the catalog through your web browser but patron’s appetite for free apps is hard to overlook.



According to Mobclix, there are more than 27,000 app-based books available on Apple’s App Store, with games falling behind at 25,400, and entertainment at a distant third place of 17,164. This month also saw Amazon release the Kindle app. This free download makes the more than 750,000 Kindle books available to anyone with a computer or smart phone. No longer do you have to own a Kindle, although I’ve put down paper books and now read exclusively on mine, but you can download books to your phone, Blackberry, or Windows computer.


Consumer Reports has the Nook from Barnes & Noble rated third under the Kindle as best overall eReader. But already the December issue of the magazine is out of date as new releases hit stores in time for holiday giving.
The iPad also faces some challenges. While it blazed a trail the fact it is expensive and lacks options now standard on other tablets like a built in web cam, USB port and high resolution camera have consumers looking at other less expensive models with more functions like the VILIV Netbook and the Samsung Galaxy tablet.

OverDrive Media Console is a free, easy-to-use application that allows you to download audiobooks, music, ebooks, and video. This free download allows you to check out media from local libraries for viewing and listening on your computer or mobile device. This Ohio based company is continually expanding and offers more than 100,000 titles.

 Use the library to help you sort through all the technology available for this month’s gift giving. Consumer Reports is available in our magazine section as well as online through our Ebsco database that is accessible from home as long as you input your library card number. Getting to the online version of Consumer Reports through Ebsco allows you to find articles and ratings without having to pay a fee required at the magazine’s online site.


Books to help you through the techno maze include How to Do Everything Facebook Applications for those who want to understand the ins and outs of the popular networking site. The popular “Dummies” series now includes BlackBerry For Dummies and Twitter for Dummies. For those looking to gain knowledge the old fashioned way consider the New York Times book Smarter by Sunday: 52 Weekends of essential knowledge for the Curious Mind. Chapters include A History of Classical Music, Physics, and Ancient Egypt.

Even with a three week checkout time you’re bound to gain a few segments of new knowledge that may help you if you find yourself in a conversation with Alex Trebek. Consider then Carved in Sand : When Attention Fails and Memory Fades in Midlife by Cathryn Jakobson Ramin. Thank goodness it’s available in Large Print.

 This is the season…the season of technology, whether we’re ready for it or not.

A book in the hand is worth...

I used to think the weight of a book in hand lent something to the entire reading experience. Cracking open a brand new book, fresh pages that hold some kind of allure, the mix of ink a heady aroma that drives the bibliophile to flip page after page consuming the entire volume at one sitting. Ebooks seemed a thing of future generations with no value added over their paper counterparts.

That is until I got a Kindle. I had been researching different digital reading devices and had actually decided on a different model, the Barnes and Noble Nook, before receiving the Kindle as a gift. A gift in hand is better than arranging for return shipping and over the course of the next several hours, as books were delivered through Whispernet technology, I entered the digital book age.



Ebooks are not new to librarians. For years libraries have offered a handful of digital downloads. But the latest generation of eBooks ad readers offer some advantages not found on previous releases. The ability to change the font size and new screen technology allows for increased viewing even in low light situations. With some devices, like the Kindle, you have the option of having the book read to you using text to voice software.


Ebooks are being used in the classroom. Previously the inability to take notes kept textbooks from being fully utilized by students but not any more. More and more research is being accessed through eBooks with citations reflecting the access of the latest digital resources. Page numbers are not available so section or url addresses are used in citations.

 While a specific device is not required to view an eBook, you can download applications to your desktop computer, laptop and even to your phone, the variety of digital tools and functions make digital readers like the Kindle and the Nook an item most students will be taking to college with them. My Kindle cost about the same as the graphing calculator I had to purchase for my kid’s algebra class.

 I had taken home Curse of the Spellmans by Lisa Lutz, but after downloading the sample onto the Kindle I found it impossible to get the 400 plus pages out of my library bag.

For those considering the purchase of an eReader check out http://ebookreadermatrix.com/ for a nice side by side comparison of devices. This month’s issue of Consumer Reports magazine features their review of eReaders that might help hesitant consumers with the decision making process.

On my Kindle now is Robert B. Parker’s Painted Ladies, the last of the Spenser novels, and The Language of Bees by Laurie R. King. Deceit: A Novel by Brandilyn Collins is more of a thriller than I would usually pull off the shelf and Almost Heaven by Judith McNaught would be the book I would not want anyone to know was on my Kindle should I suddenly depart.

 

Oh, and I better renew the library’s copy of Curse of the Spellmans that’s still at the bottom of my book bag. It’s overdue.