New and Featured Books for 12/04/2012:

Come and check out these and some of the other new books and materials (or at least new to us) added to our library collection…

FICTION:

Shiver by Karen Robards

Playing The Hand You’re Dealt by Trice Hickman

Threat Vector by Tom Clancy and Mark Greaney

Aquaman, vol. 1: The Trench by Geoff Johns and illustrated by Ivan Reis

The Strain, vol. 1, story by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan, adapted by David Lapham, and illustrated by Mike Huddleston

Zoo: The Graphic Novel by James Pattererson and Michael Ledwidge, adapted by Andy MacDonald

Private London by James Patterson and Mark Pearson

Dead Man’s Folly by Agatha Christie

The Body In The Library by Agatha Christie

Batman – Bruce Wayne: The Road Home by Fabian Nicieza, Mike W. Barr, Bryan Q. Miller, Derek Fridolfs, Adam Beechen, and Marc Andreyko and illustrated by Cliff Richards, Ramon Bachs, John Lucas, Javier Saltares, Rebecca Buchman, Walden Wong, Pere Perez, Peter Nguyen, Ryan Winn, Szymon Kudranski, Agustin Padilla, Scott McDaniel, and Andy Owens

Seal Team 666 by Weston Ochse

The Black Box by Michael Connelly

And Then You Dye: A Needlecraft Mystery by Monica Ferris

Strike Of The Mountain Man by William W. Johnstone and J.A. Johnstone

The Silver Linings Playbook by Matthew Quick

The Rum Diary by Hunter S. Thompson

Nano by Robin Cook

Dying On The Vine by Aaron Elkins

NON-FICTION:

Inventing Wine: A New History Of One Of The World’s Most Ancient Pleasures by Paul Lukacs

Counting One’s Blessings: The Selected Letters Of Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother, edited and with a preface by William Shawcross

A Light That Never Goes Out: The Enduring Saga Of The Smiths by Tony Fletcher

Dogfight: The 2012 Presidential Campaign In Verse by Calvin Trillin

Tap Dancing To Work: Warren Buffett On Practically Everything, 1966-2012, collected and expanded by Carol J. Loomis

38 Nooses: Lincoln, Little Crow, And The Beginning Of The Frontier’s End by Scott W. Berg

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Please note that books mentioned here could be checked out between the time they end up on the blog and when you come to check them out. If you don’t see the items you’re looking for then please come up to the front desk, OR call us, OR send us an email at robinsbaselibrary@gmail.com and  we’ll put your name on the reserve list for when the item returns.

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Previous New/Featured books for Adults:

11/20/12.

11/19/12.

11/01/12.

10/19/12.

10/16/12.

10/12/12.

Author quotes: The needs of a society.

When you decide to do a regular feature on your blog where you share interesting quotes from authors, well… it’s nice to work in a library when that’s the assignment you’ve set out for yourself. Because in a library there’s never a shortage of amazing stories and personalities in the library, no fear of ever running out of funny anecdotes, inspiring tales, or brilliant nuggets of wisdom.

And then when you do single out a particular author that you’d like to share the words of, it can be hard because part of the reason you picked them in the first place is that they’ve said so many wonderful things. But then again, it’s nice to be cursed with options, isn’t it?

Today’s author that I’d like to share the words of with you is Dr. Maya Angelou, the poet, memoirist, actress, director, raconteur, and civil rights activist. And rather than just a single quote, I’m going to indulge myself and treat you, and share a few…

One of my favorites:

“If a human being dreams a great dream, dares to love somebody; if a human being dares to be Martin King, or Mahatma Gandhi, or Mother Theresa, or Malcolm X; if a human being dares to be bigger than the condition into which she or he was born—it means so can you. And so you can try to stretch, stretch, stretch yourself so you can internalize, ‘Homo sum, humani nil a me alienum puto. I am a human being, nothing human can be alien to me.’ That’s one thing I’m learning.”

from Oprah Presents Master Class, featuring Dr. Maya Angelou, which aired 01/16/2011.

from here.

One of her most famous quotes:

“The needs of a society determine its ethics.”

from her first autobiography, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, 1969. It’s often misquoted as “The needs of society determine its ethics,” which makes a little bit of a difference, but the quote in all of its context is: “The needs of a society determine its ethics, and in the Black American ghettos the hero is that man who is offered only the crumbs from his country’s table but by ingenuity and courage is able to take for himself a Lucullan feast.”

The title of Angelou’s book comes Paul Laurence Dunbar’s poem, “Sympathy.”

from here.

And this is a quote I think most people need to hear:

“People will forget what you said. People will forget what you did. But people will never forget how you made them feel.”

from Worth Repeating: More Than 5,000 Classic And Contemporary Quotes, edited by Bob Kelly, 2003.

Elsewhere on the internet:

Maya Angelou’s official website.

Maya Angelou’s twitter.

An oral history of Maya Angelou, via the National Visionary Leadership Project.

Angelou was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom on this day last year.

An interview with Angelou in The Paris Review.

Maya Angelou’s Black History Month special.

A video of Maya Angelou reading her poem “On The Pulse Of Morning” at the inauguration of President Bill Clinton in 1993.

A conversation with Maya Angelou at age 75.

The Schomburg Center in Harlem has acquired the Maya Angelou archives.

“Phenomenal Woman” by Maya Angelou.

Maya Angelou at the Academy of American Poets.

At the library we have quite a few books both by Angelou and about her life and work, including classics like I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings and The Heart Of A Woman, and I’ll hope you’ll come and check them out. We also have her poetry collection, And Still I Rise, and I’m going to leave you with a stanza from the title poem from that collection…

You may write me down in history

with your bitter, twisted lies,

You may trod me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I’ll rise.