Tuesday, March 27, 2012

2011 Bestsellers

The Bestseller List, in the New York Times or in USA Today, gives the reader a list of titles with the highest sales during the week.  So if you or your friends like to read, a best seller list helps you to find new titles.  The NHTI Library owns a number of recent bestsellers.  Won’t you borrow one for the weekend?  

  • 11/22/63: a Novel  by Stephen King   PS3561 .I483 A615 2011
  • Bossypants by Tina Fey   PN2287 .F4255 A3 2011
  • Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese  PS3622 .E744 C87 2010
  • Decision Points by George Bush   E903 .A3 2010
  • A Feast for Crows :a Song of Ice & Fire, Book 4 by George R.R.Martin   PS3563 .A7239 F39 2011
  • Game of Thrones : a Song of Ice & Fire, Book One by George R.R. Martin  PS3563 .A7239 G36 2011
  • Land of Painted Caves by Jean Auel   NEAR PS3551 .U36 L36 2011
  • The Litigators by Graham Grisham   PS3557 .R5355 L58 2011
  • Miss Peregrines Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs  PZ7 .R4423 M577 2011
  • The Paris Wife by Paula McLain   PS3563 .C383495 P37 2011
  • Port Mortuary by Patricia Cornwell   PS3553 .O692 P575 2010
  • Sing You Home by Jodi Picoult  PS3566 .A822 T53 2011
  • Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson   QA76.2 .J63I83 2011
  • A Storm of Swords: A Song of Ice & Fire, Book 3 by George R.R. Martin   PS3563 .A7239 S7 2011
  • Tick Tock by James Patterson   PS3566 .A822 T53 2011
  • What the Night Knows by Dean Koontz   PS3561 .O55 W48 2011

Thursday, March 22, 2012

Women in History

Women’s History Month
March 2012

“During Women’s History Month, we recall that the pioneering legacy of our grandmothers and great-grandmothers is revealed not only in our museums and history books, but also in the fierce determination and limitless potentials of our daughters and grandmothers.  As we make headway on the crucial issues of our time, let the courageous vision championed by women of past generations inspire us to defend the dreams and opportunities of those to come.”

Presidential Proclamation -- Womens History Month, 2012. Lanham: Federal Information & News Dispatch, Inc, 2012. OxResearch; ProQuest Central. Web. 19 Mar. 2012.

Head over to the Proquest Database for the  complete text: Women's History Month 2012 

Visit the library to scan a display of current titles that document the history of women in America.

Friday, March 16, 2012

Hunting for Digital Books, the 24/7 Library Collection

In addition to direct eBrary access, many of the digital ebooks in the eBrary database can also be found through the library catalog. Once a title is located in the catalog as an electronic resource, click on the blue title bar and on the next screen locate the link for NHTI. Select the link and you will be taken directly to eBrary and the full text book.  

The following link to the eBrary Quick Start Guide will explain the many features available.


Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Book Review - Great Works: 50 Paintings Explored

Great Works: 50 Paintings Explored

Tom Lubbock (2011)

ND1143.L933 2011

How does the flatness of Mickey Mouse's ears illuminate the 'non-specific bodies' of Klimt's Water Nymphs? Why was Vuillard's genius confined to the decade when he worked at home? What was it that made Ingres such an exciting weirdo? …Here are 50 great essays on paintings by Tom Lubbock, first published in the passionately argued and much-loved 'Great Works' series he wrote weekly for the UK’s Independent. Always inventive and authoritative, each piece is devoted to a single painting. This is a book of surprises: Giotto's Vices as 'studies in self-destruction'; Hitchcock's lighting tricks on Suspicion compared to the luminosity of a Zurbaran still life; how the figure in Gwen John's Girl in a Blue Dress 'withdraws from life, fading into its surface, pressed like a flower'; Gericault's Study of Truncated Limbs, as 'a good painting, simply, of sex'.

Collecting his best writing together for the first time Tom Lubbock explores his thinking about art with great intelligence and humour. Spanning 800 years of western art, this book is simply the cleverest, funniest, most moving and most original art book you are likely to see.” From the Inside Flap Great Works: 50 Paintings Explored

If Art (with a capital “A”) challenges us, among other things, to see our world and ourselves differently, then the late Tom Lubbock, critic, reviewer, essayist and winner of the Hawthornden Prize for Art Criticism, challenges – no, shakes – us to look at the art and the standard criticism (and our relationship to accepted criticism) again in ways that perhaps might just bring a smile to a semiologist.

In his obituary, which appeared in the UK’s The Guardian of January 10, 2011, it was said of him that “…apart from his keen eye and his wide range of reference, Tom's virtues included bracing clarity (he never used art-speak or any other kind of higher waffle), utter honesty (he was never intimidated by reputations), and originality (even if you thought you knew his tastes, he could surprise you). He could also be howlingly funny. His essay about conceptual art, based on various things you might do with a toaster, should be mounted in every modern art gallery as a contribution to public sanity.” What survives Tom are the "…exquisitely crafted ‘pieces’ addressing the world in many different registers – sardonic, caustic, erudite and celebratory, with instinct, intelligence and wit".

Lubbock’s challenge, as it were, is both simultaneously all the more pronounced and retreating as we see old art as new and are, consequently, more directly part of the art. His insights lead us to acknowledge the art differently putting us in touch, perhaps not comfortably, with our humanity. Lubbock’s thoughts on Vermeer’s View of Delft or Van Gogh’s Wheatfield with Lark are but two examples in the collection that cause us to see these works with fresh insight and, in his own way, gives us permission to ask and face the most basic questions of living and dying.  How to properly read a painting – abstract to representational – is the legacy and gift of a man too soon gone.