Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Summertime, Summertime

It's finally summer! The warm weather is here and school's out, so is it time for some rest and relaxation?  Will it be off to Europe, a road trip,  the beach, or somewhere close? If a '"staycation" is it, there are plenty of places to visit right here in our neighborhood. Be a tourist at home. For ideas, the following DVDs can help you discover places to visit right in your own backyard!
The following explores the architectural and historical treasures of Chicago:

If you don't want to go to Chicago, then check out the following: Fox River Valley and Chain O'Lakes, Chicago's North Shore, and Northwest of Chicago.

Last but not least, do you want to spend a day at Brookfield Zoo, Chicago Botanic Garden, or Morton Arboretum to name a few? Because you are a GPL library cardholder, you will be eligible for a Museum Adventure Pass to one of these attractions.  For more information, please visit http://www.museumadventure.org/ and next time you're at the Library, stop by the Reader Services Desk.

Whatever you do, enjoy the summer!

Monday, June 27, 2011

New Audiobooks at the Glenview Public Library

Be sure to check out the following new audiobooks that have recently become available at the Glenview Public Library!
Crunch Time by Diane Mott Davidson
20 Years Younger by Bob Greene
Tabloid City by Pete Hamill
22 Britannia Road by Amanda Hodgkinson
Trader of Secrets by Steve Martini
The Snowman by Jo Nesbo
State of Wonder by Ann Patchett
The Devil’s Light by Richard North Patterson

Thursday, June 23, 2011

Books That Crack Into Art Theft

What is one of the greatest crimes occurring in the world today? Terrorism, corruption, money laundering? Would you believe ... art theft?

According to the FBI, art theft, "fraud, looting, and trafficking across state and international lines" costs about $6 billion every year - it's big business. Since I recently led a book discussion of the title, Museum of the Missing by Simon Houpt, I have become obsessed with the crime of art theft. This book offers an intriguing tour through the underworld of art theft. The volume is beautifully written and generously illustrated and tells a story as fascinating as any crime novel. It's a gripping page-turner featuring everything from wartime plundering to modern-day heists, from examining criminals' motivations to a look at the art detectives who spend their lives hunting them down.

One art detective, Robert K. Wittman, who was mentioned in Museum of the Missing, often risked his life as the FBI's chief art hunter and undercover art agent for many years. He takes readers along on the hunt for stolen masterpieces in his own book entitled Priceless: How I Went Undercover to Rescue the World's Stolen Treasures. To help solve the theft of 18 paintings worth $50 million stolen from the home of a Spanish billionaire, he writes:
"I'd be entering another hotel room across town.
To meet a desperate, possibly homicidal gangster eager to close a $10 million deal.
Unarmed.
Dangling a million euros cash as bait.
Working with an FBI partner in his first undercover case.
Negotiating in French, a language I didn't understand.
Swell."
The bait worked.

Everybody loves a mystery, so after reading these books, what really intrigues me is the mystery of who stole $500 million in art from Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum on March 18, 1990 and it is just plain maddening. A journalist, Ulrich Boser, took up the chase after inheriting the case files of art-theft-detective Harold Smith of Lloyds of London, who pursued the Gardner "caper" for years until his death in 2005. Boser became as obsessed as Smith and wrote The Gardner Heist which does not solve the case, but comes very close. He found an important but long-ignored witness in a persuasive case against the man he thinks did it. Boser believes the Gardner paintings will reappear - stolen masterpieces have turned up after decades, even centuries.



I enjoyed these books because, as I said, I'm obsessed. However, if you have only a passing fancy in art theft and art crime and only want to read one book on the topic, I recommend, The Rescue Artist: A True Story of Art, Thieves, and the Hunt for a Missing Masterpiece by Edward Dolnick. This book focuses on the famous art theft of Edvard Munch's The Scream, one version of which was pilfered from the National Gallery of Norway in Oslo in 1994. This famous heist is the centerpiece, but Dolnick interweaves other fascinating stories of famous art thefts including the Mona Lisa stolen from the Louvre in 1911. Dolnick goes out of his way to give us a portrait of Charley Hill, the most famous art detective in the UK, a former Fulbright scholar and cop. The Rescue Artist also offers readers a biography of the artist Edvard Munch and explores the issues of why thieves steal art. So, if you are an art lover, a true crime reader, or like me, fascinated with the dark world of art theft and museum thievery, this is the book for you!

Visit the Readers Services desk for additional art caper titles. Even though it's hard to beat the real-life adventures of missing art, check out my next blog for a wealth of fiction titles and authors who write about art and crime.

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Chicago Symphony Orchestra - 75 years at Ravinia


The Chicago Symphony orchestra celebrates its 75th anniversary at the Ravinia Festival this year from July 7 through August 14.

The program this year fills everyone's taste in music and features such artists as Deborah Voigt, Patricia Racette, Bryn Terfel, Yo-Yo Ma and The 5 Browns.

The orchestra's first concert on July 7 celebrates the 200th anniversary of Franz Liszt with Lang Lang performing his works on piano. On July 8 Andre Watts was also perform on piano. The conductor for both concerts will be Ravinia's past music director Christoph Eschenbach. Both are at 8 p.m.

Deborah Voigt, soprano, will sing arias by Wagner and Richard Strauss, including music from "Tannhouser," "Die Walkure," "Elektra," and "Salome." Music from "Sigfried's Rhine Journey" from "Gotterdammerung" and "Dance of the Seven Veils" from "Salome" will also be performed. This program is July 9 at 7:30 p.m.

If you enjoy listening Rachmaninoff, then come and hear the composer's "Vesna" ("Spring") cantas and Romanovsky playing "Rhapsody on a theme by Paganini on July 21 at 8 p.m.

On July 30 at 7:40 p.m. Maestro Conlon will conduct the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in a concert version of Puccini's "Tosca," sung by Patricia Racette in the title role and Bryn Terfel as the evil Scarpia.

Well-known cellist Yo-Yo Ma will play Tchaikovsky's "Andante Cantabile" and "Variations on a Rococo Theme" with Conlon on August 8 at 8 p.m.

The 5 Browns, siblings and Juilliard graduates will play various keyboard works and will present "The Edge of the World" for five pianos and orchestra by Nico Muhly. This is a world premier and a Ravinia commission.

Finally, on August 18 and 19 at 7:30 p.m., the orchestra, under the conductor Ludwig Wicki, will play Howard Shore's score for "Lord of the Rings - Fellowship of the Ring."

A special display featuring music being performed this season at Ravinia will be in the Audiovisual Room.

Sunday, June 19, 2011

Get Out Your Hankie

Recently, a patron asked me for suggestions for a really sad love story.  She’d been going through a breakup with her boyfriend and wanted to read something that reflected what she was feeling.  So I set out to find some real weepers and came up with the following titles.  So have you Kleenex handy when you take these on, because you’re going to need them!

The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger.
Passionately in love, Clare and Henry vow to hold onto each other and their marriage as they struggle with the effects of Chrono-Displacement Disorder, a condition that casts Henry involuntarily into the world of time travel.

The Bridges of Madison County by Robert James Waller.
On assignment shooting the covered bridges in Iowa, photographer Robert Kincaid falls in love with Iowa native Francesca Johnson during four days of love, magic, and beauty.

Fireworks Over Toccoa by Jeffrey Stepakoff.
Eighty-four-year-old Lily Davis Woodward looks back at a turning point in her life, when she had to choose between her World War II soldier husband and the poor Italian immigrant planning the fireworks display to celebrate the soldiers' return.

Suzanne’s Diary For Nicholas by James Patterson.
Kate Wilkerson found her perfect man at last, then one day, without explanation, he disappears leaving behind only a diary for her to read. The diary is written by a new mother for her baby son, Nicholas. Soon it becomes clear to Kate that the man who left is the husband and father in this young family

Atonement by Ian McEwan.
Three children lose their innocence--as the sweltering summer heat bears down on the hottest day in 1935--and their lives are changed forever.

P.S. I Love You by Cecelia Ahern.
Holly has always depended on her husband's practical advice to keep her going and despairs when she loses him to brain cancer, until a package arrives filled with advice for carrying on with her life without her beloved husband.

Romeo And Juliet by William Shakespeare.
The classic play in which two children from warring families fall in love, with a tragic result.

Shadow Patriots by Lucia St. Clair Robson.
Her family torn between her parents' loyalist stance and her brother's decision to join Washington's forces, Philadelphia Quaker Kate Darby finds herself falling for a handsome major who is being sheltered in her home and turning spy for the patriot forces.

Love Story by Erich Segal.
A bittersweet contemporary love story chronicles the romance and marriage of Oliver Barrett, IV, a wealthy Harvard ice hockey player from a stuffy aristocratic family, and Jenny Cavilleri, a poor Radcliffe music student from a working class background.

Cold Mountain
by Charles Frazier.
After Inman escapes from a war hospital in 1864 and starts walking to Cold Mountain, Ada struggles to save her mountain farm with the help of Ruby, an illiterate but efficient farmer.

The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje.
In Cairo, a man meets a married woman with whom he falls in love, but the war keeps them apart and destroys her while he, severely burned, lives to tell their story to a nurse caring for him in an abandoned Tuscan villa.

kb

Monday, June 13, 2011

Waiting for the new Erik Larson book?

In the Garden of Beasts is the new book by the author of The Devil in the White City and is looking as though it will be another non-fiction bestseller. If you find yourself on the waiting list for this book at the library, here are several other suggestions you may enjoy if you like non-fiction that reads like fiction.

Set at the dawn of the 20th century, Abbott tells the story of two sisters, Ada and Minna Everleigh, and the opulent brothel they opened in Chicago.

Thunderstruck by Erik Larson

After murdering his wife, Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen tries to escape to the US via ship, but his plan is foiled due to the newest wireless technology used on board.

The Zookeeper's Wife: A War Story by Diane Ackerman

The true story of how the director of the Warsaw Zoo sheltered over 300 Jews and Polish resisters in the zoo during the Nazi occupation.

A Death in Belmont by Sebastian Junger

The author of A Perfect Storm revisits the Boston Strangler case and it's connection to a murder that took place in his hometown of Belmont in which a Black man was wrongly convicted.

Friday, June 10, 2011

Scandinavian Crime Wave Revisited

The Nordic crime wave continues. Try one of these new additions.

Ice Princess by Camilla Läckberg
Writer Erica Falck returns to her hometown after her parent’s funeral to learn that her friend, Alex, was found dead in an ice-cold bath with her wrists slashed. Her death is initially ruled a suicide. Disturbed by her friend’s death Falck decides to write a memoir about the remote and beautiful Alex, one that will help her with a bad case of writer’s block. She joins forces with Detective Patrik Hedstrom, who has his own suspicions about the case.

Red Wolf: a novel by Liza Marklund
Stockholm journalist Annika Bengtzon turns independent reporter, mostly pursuing terrorism stories. While she’s investigating in the northern town of Lulea, a fellow journalist and source dies in a hit-and-run accident, which turns out to be the first in a series of murders. Annika traces these murders to a deadly act of sabotage on a Swedish military base in 1969, and begins to suspect that the man behind the present-day slayings and the army base attack is a man that goes by the code name “Ragnwald”. As Annika delves deeper into the murder and sabotage her marriage begins to falter, can she juggle a demanding career, two children and a marriage in trouble?

Last Rituals by Yrsa Siguroardottir
Lawyer Thora Gudmundsdottir and her new partner, Matthew Reich, journey to a remote corner of Iceland to investigate how the murder of a German student may be connected to the victim’s interest in witchcraft.

Last Fix by Kjell Ola Dahl
After recovering drug addict Katrine Bratterund is found dead on the shore of a serene lake, detectives delve into the case, which holds a web of secrets and lies that stretches back generations.

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Forthcoming Fiction for July

Here are some titles coming out this July. You can reserve these by going to our Online Catalog, Bibliocommons, or by calling the Reader Services Desk at 847-729-7500 x7600!

Bannon Brothers by Janet Dailey
The Darling Dahlias and the Naked Ladies by Susan Wittig Albert
The Real Macaw by Donna Andrews
The Secret Mistress by Mary Balogh
The Gap Year: a Novel by Sarah Bird
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes by Jill Churchill
Split Second by Catherine Coulter
All the Pretty Hearses by Mary Daheim
Undead and Undetermined by Mary Janice Davidson
Escape by Barbara Delinsky
The Night Train: a Novel by Clyde Edgerton
The Silent Girl by Tess Gerritsen
The Woodcutter: a Novel by Reginald Hill
Betrayal of Trust : A J. P. Beaumont Novel by J.A. Jance
Quinn by Iris Johansen
Hotwire : A Maggie O Dell Novel by Alex Kava
Robert Ludlum s The Bourne Dominion by Eric Lustbader
Justice by Karen Robards
Burnt Mountain by Anne Rivers Siddons
Portrait of a Spy by Daniel Silva
Happy Birthday: a Novel by Danielle Steel
Monument to Murder : A Capital Crimes Novel by Margaret Truman
The Big Switch by Harry Turtledove
Then Came You by Jennifer Weiner
Infernal Angels by Loren D. Estleman

Saturday, June 4, 2011

Read Books -- Win Prizes! A Midsummer Knight's Read Summer Reading Program

Reading Programs aren’t just for kids! Come and join A Midsummer Knight's Read - the summer reading program for adults and teens!

Celebrate the first summer reading program in the new Glenview Library, at the Summer Reading Program Kick-off festival on Saturday, June 11 from 10 am to 4 pm. Take the time to sign the whole family up - adults, teens and children for their Summer Reading Program.

There will be activities, entertainment, prizes, and refreshments too. Only adults registering at the Kick-off Festival have the extra chance to enter a raffle for Ravinia Lawn passes. Otherwise sign up at the Reader Services desk from June 11 through July 31. Read five books to win a Knight in Shining Armor flashlight and get a raffle ticket for the Grand Prize drawings.

Want more of a challenge? Join us for A Midsummer Knight’s Quest - A Library Scavenger Hunt on Friday July 22 from 6:30-8:30pm. Sign up your valiant team of four or have staff find a team for you. Wander the stacks of the Library in search of clues. Winning teams receive prizes and refreshments will be served. Participants must be at least 19 years old and register by Wednesday July 20. To reserve your place in the Quest, call 847-729-7500.

Come join us for some fun at the library this summer!

Friday, June 3, 2011

The Love Goddess' Cooking School

When Holly's Grandmother Camilla dies, she inherits her business - a cooking school, and her house, but does she inherit her 'second sight'? In The Love Goddess' Cooking School by Melissa Senate, that is the question her small Maine town neighbors want to know. But Holly has had problems in her own life, and can't make a marinara sauce. She's not too sure that continuing the cooking school is such a good idea after all. But when she has four students sign up for classes, she decides to give it a try.

Senate does a great job at creating a small town community where everyone knows about everyone else's business. And Holly discovers that her grandmother's life was not all joy and roses. Filled with great characters and greater descriptions of food (you will be craving Italian after this one - trust me), the reader will enjoy reading about Holly's struggles in the kitchen, glimpses of Camilla's strength, and their cooking students growth, both in the kitchen and in their personal lives.

Makes one want to take an Italian cooking class if they are going to be that cool! A fun summer read.

MF