Blog Archive

I won’t claim these are the best books of 2011, but  I really enjoyed them and most  of the titles have appeared on other "best of the year"  lists. 

The Art of Fielding: a Novel by Chad Harbach

Harbach's first novel examines life, love, and baseball at a small liberal arts college in Wisconsin. Like a baseball season, the story goes up and down and brings you to a conclusion that can leave you feeling a little frustrated, but it's still a great book.

Family Fang by Kevin Wilson

A family of performance artists finally come to terms with just how important art is to each of them. It's all very clever and knowing, but it's also as dark and funny as anything you'll read all year. Wilson writes stylishly, with a clear eye for family dysfunction and the absurdity of the contemporary art world, but his real skill is technical, building up a slow-drip mystery.

The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides

Set in the early 1980s, three recent college graduates embark on a journey towards love, God, self-discovery, and impending adulthood in this heartbreaker of a book. The author said that he wanted to write a Jane Austen novel, and there is just about as much detail as is in her books. Many readers think one of the characters is based on David Foster Wallace.

My New American Life by Francine Prose

Lula, a twenty-six-year-old Albanian woman living surreptitiously in New York City on an expiring tourist visa, hopes to make a better life for herself in America. Unlike many immigrant novels, this one is light-hearted, and you will learn some Albanian history.

Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson

A private investigator sets out to find a woman's natural parents, and a very likeable retired woman police officer embarks on a new life. Witty, sardonic, literate, often more than slightly surreal, the Jackson Brodie mysteries are anything but routine whodunits.

State of Wonder by Ann Patchett

The author of Bel Canto poses many intriguing ideas about how we live in her modern-day Heart of Darkness, which swaps the Congo for the Amazon and ivory hunters for pharmaceutical researchers but probes some of the same issues of imperialism, guilt and responsibility, of power and its use and abuse. The story includes two very strong, brave  women.

Swamplandia! by Karen Russell

Russell's story at first seems preposterous and campy - the Bigtree family runs a roadside attraction, Swamplandia!, in Florida, but Russell writes brilliantly about the characters and the Florida swamps.  The clan has wrestled alligators for tourists for generations, but now the family business is in trouble. 

Ten Thousand Saints by Eleanor Henderson

It starts dark - the accidental overdose of a Vermont teenager on the last night of 1987 and goes darker - the AIDS crisis, drugs, hardcore punk, secrets, lies. But the grittiness of this book never overshadows its poignancy.

This Vacant Paradise by Victoria Patterson

An enthralling reinterpretation of The House of Mirth that reminds us that there are contemporary Lily Barts. In debt and unmarried, Esther Wilson works at a clothing boutique and lives with her wealthy grandmother, Eileen, whose financial generosity is orchestrated to "encourage dependence". Esther's sense of integrity and her desire for love are so understandable, yet they continually bring her into conflict with her materialistic family and acquaintances in Newport Beach.

Warhorse, based on the children's book by Michael Morpurgo, opened on Christmas Day. Steven Spielberg directs the story of a boy and his horse caught up in the horrors of World War I. A  memoir of World War I that will probably never be made into a movie is the poet Robert Graves' Goodbye to all That. (Robert Graves is best known to American readers as the author of the novel of ancient Rome, "I Claudius"). The phrase "goodbye to all that" was a farewell to pre-1914 England, when wars were fought by heroes, soldiers were led by gentlemen, and the terrible winters of the fighting In France were still to come. Graves expressed so clearly the aftermath of combat, the wounds to the mind and soul. He told of his years in the trenches as an army captain in chilling understatement but with an intense emotional impact.

The memoir itself barely survives the end of the war; the post-war chapters seem listless and shell-shocked, emotionally detached.  Graves' marriage and the birth of his children seem like newspaper reports. Surprisingly, he doesn't even talk of his poetry much. This, surely, is not a defect of the book, but a genuine reflection of his feelings at the time: After the War, nothing meant much to him.

You can find Goodbye to All That other classic nonfiction titles on the APL Recommends Modern Classic Nonfiction list.  The library also has the well-reviewed new book about World War I , To End All Wars: a Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918..

This December our Lego Lab was presented with a challenge; working in groups, build using only the pieces in front of you and use as many of those pieces as possible. Here are a couple creations!

Join us in the coming year at Lego Lab!

Wednesday, December 28th at 2:00 p.m.

Welcome! We've got a lot to show you! We have tried to make recommendations and our catalog of materials a more central part of the website. 

So you should see those popping up in various places as you visit. 

If you are looking for something that was on the old website try a search, or Ask a Librarian! and get some help finding it!

Don't forget to let us know what you think.

As a Midwesterner and a graduate of an Iowa College, I think about Iowa more than the average Texas resident. Some of my favorite facts about Iowa:

• It is the home of Marion Morrison (later known as John Wayne)
• Iowa is the origin of the Red Delicious apple (you can read more about this factoid in Michael Pollan’s book Botany of Desire)
• The Des Moines Register sponsors an annual bike ride across the state (Register’s Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa a.k.a. RAGBRAI)
• It is hilly and beautiful (not technically a fact)
• Iowa is also important (to me alone) because it is the first state in which I cast my vote for President of the United States of America.

This last fact, which continues to bring me a warm fuzzy feeling, is also relevant because we are now a mere 18 days from an important event. The Iowa Caucus, partly because it is the first presidential caucus of the year, has taken on a huge amount of significance over the years. Stephen Bloom recently wrote an article for The Atlantic in which he claims, “whoever wins the Iowa Caucuses in January will very likely have a 50 percent chance of being elected president 11 months later.” Probably explains why the GOP candidates came out with their figurative guns blazing during last night’s debate in Sioux City.

Maybe, like many of us, you’re confused about why and how Iowa has become so important in elections. Guess what! Your local library can help you out. In addition to providing access to many newspapers in print and through our databases, we also have quite a few books on this topic precisely!

A few suggestions:
Primary politics : how presidential candidates have shaped the modern nominating system
by Kamarck, Elaine Ciulla.

Grassroots rules : how the Iowa Caucus helps elect American presidents
by Hull, Christopher C.

We will be heard : women's struggles for political power in the United States
by Freeman, Jo

Postville : a clash of cultures in heartland America
by Bloom, Stephen G. (Also the author of the Atlantic article reference above)

An Electronic Resource:
Iowa precinct caucuses [electronic resource] : the making of a media event 2nd ed.
by Winebrenner, Hugh, 1937-

Would you like to know what Consumer Reports has to say about a product before you buy it? Easy! Just pull out your Austin Public Library Card and log in to the Austin Public Library’s database pages. The full text of the magazine including photographs and charts is available online from the most current issue back to January, 1991.

In addition to Consumer Reports, hundreds of other magazines including Fortune, Art in America, Texas Monthly, Money, Real Simple, Highlights for Children, PC World, Atlantic Monthly, Scientific American, and Psychology Today are available in full text through the MasterFILE Premier and our other databases. Many are available in pdf format (Adobe Acrobat) with images.

Use eJournal Finder to see if a magazine, newspaper, or journal is available in full text in one of our databases. You can search by title, title keyword, or ISSN. You can also browse by subject to see which titles are available in your area of interest. eJournal Finder only lists titles that are available in full text. Publications that are just indexed or have only selected full text are not listed. Most individual databases also have a publications title list that you can check, as well.

Consumer Reports and MasterFILE Premier are available to everyone at all Austin Public Library locations. APL cardholders can access the databases 24 hours a day on the Internet. To find out more call 512-974-7400.

 Looking for something to do while on break from school. Come play Mario Kart!