For the Home Brewer

Braswell Memorial Library has a range of great books for the home brewer. If you’re just starting out or are looking for inspiration, come on by to check them out today.

Reach For the Stars

There’s now another way to reach for the stars at Braswell Memorial Library. We have started a program to loan telescopes! BML has acquired eight reflector telescopes, four in size 4.5 inch and four in size 6 inch, and a number of new books and DVDs on astronomy. The Cummins Planetarium at the Imperial Centre has partnered with the library in support of this project.

If you ever had the slightest interest in astronomy, or have a child interested in science, now is the time to test the waters of this fascinating subject. These are not toy telescopes. They are quality instruments specifically geared towards the amateur astronomer. Along with the books and DVDs they may well serve to spark a lifelong interest in astronomy.

Check out all the library has to offer or visit them online http://www.braswell-library.org

The telescope project was made possible by a grant from the Federal Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by the State Library of North Carolina, a division of the Department of Cultural Resources.

 

New Binocular Kits

Are you interested in birds or other wildlife? Braswell Memorial Library is now loaning binoculars to aspiring naturalists! Binoculars can be checked out for a week at a time, and come with a kit including a guide to birds native to Eastern North Carolina. Our collection also features a number of books on birdwatching.

The binoculars are quality instruments selected by experienced birders. Of course they can also be used for watching  wildlife, sporting events, or any other pursuit where getting a close look from a distance would be useful. Like visiting the NC Zoo or going to the beach!

Come in to check out a pair today!

Staff book review: Grace’s Guide by Grace Helbig

Grace Helbig is most famous for being a YouTube personality. She has also appeared on TV and earlier this year launched her own TV show. And she’s an author! This, her first book, is a self-improvement guide aimed at older teens and the college crowd. She is first and foremost a comedian so the book is written in a light hearted, self-depreciating style that invokes her YouTube and TV personas.

I wanted to like this book more than I did. I like Grace Helbig on YouTube and find her brand of humor entertaining. She has a somewhat awkward way of looking at things that I find endearing. The book is written in that same style but that style did not translate easily to print. In her videos her facial expressions and body language enhance her delivery. That enhancement is somewhat lost in her book even though it contains a number of photos.

Grace’s Guide didn’t meet my expectations. It was good, and I enjoyed it, but not as much as I had hoped. In the book Grace gives good advice which the young adult reader will find useful and appealing. She manages to slip in a fair number of helpful tips on life among the humor. You will smile, you will laugh, and if you don’t watch out, you will learn something. Grace also relates a number of personal experiences which her fans will find interesting. Not a bad read, but all in all , I didn’t enjoy Grace the author as much as I enjoy Grace the YouTube star.

In all fairness, I am way past the age of the target audience of this book. I suspect, as much as I hate to admit it, that there is probably some generational slippage. On Amazon the book has a solid five star rating. I would give it four stars, maybe 3.5. If you like Grace you will like the book, and if you are of the right age, you will likely even love it. If you don’t know Grace check out some of her YouTube videos first. If you like them then you too will enjoy her book.

Review by Phillip Whitford, Associate Director For Support Services.

 

 

 

The Little Free Library

As many of you know, about two years ago Braswell Memorial Library assumed operation of the Wesley Privette Memorial Library (WPML) in Bailey, NC. As part of our services to the Bailey Community we recently started a Little Free Library on the front lawn of WPML. What is a Little Free Library? It is a worldwide connected group of library stewards and book lovers sharing their favorite literature and stories. There are Little Free Libraries all over the United States and the world. Ours is the first one in Bailey. In its simplest form a Little Free Library is box of books where anyone may stop by and pick up a book (or two) and drop off another book to share. Yes, it is a free book exchange, but it is so much more!

Don’t have a book to drop off and trade? No problem! You are still welcome to get a book from the Little Free Library.  Want a good book to read and WPML is closed? No problem. The Little Free Library is open all the time. Got a book from the Little Free Library and love it so much you can’t bear to part with it? No problem! Keep it! Bring us another book when you can. And if you can’t bring another book? That’s not a problem either. Have you read a wonderful book that you want to share with your neighbors but don’t quite know how to? No problem! Put it in the Little Free Library and let them discover it!

There are no due dates, no late returns, and no fines. Just books to borrow and share. Is everything available from the Little Free Library? No. No library has everything. We try to have a nice selection of adult and children’s fiction and nonfiction in our Little Free Library. But what you can’t get from the Little Free Library you can probably get from WPML or Braswell Memorial Library.

So stop by and check out our Little Free Library in Bailey. Or, if your travels take you elsewhere check out any Little Free Library you encounter. Want to search them out? Check out http://littlefreelibrary.org/ourmap/  to see a map of Little Free Libraries worldwide.

Who knows? You might even be inspired to start your own Little Free Library.

Nuevos libros espanoles!

Hemos añadido recientemente una serie de nuevos libros a nuestra colección española . De la ficción popular como Juego de Tronos y Perdida a los nuevos libros de cocina y biografías , esperamos que tenemos un poco de algo para todos nuestros clientes de habla hispana para disfrutar.

Staff Book Review: The Man Who Touched His Own Heart by Rob Dunn

The Man Who Touched His Own Heart tells the raucous, gory, mesmerizing story of the heart, from the first “explorers” who dug up cadavers and plumbed their hearts’ chambers, through the first heart surgeries-which had to be completed in three minutes before death arrived-to heart transplants and the latest medical efforts to prolong our hearts’ lives, almost defying nature in the process.

Thought of as the seat of our soul, then as a mysteriously animated object, the heart is still more a mystery than it is understood. Why do most animals only get one billion beats? (And how did modern humans get to over two billion-effectively letting us live out two lives?) Why are sufferers of gingivitis more likely to have heart attacks? Why do we often undergo expensive procedures when cheaper ones are just as effective? What do Da Vinci, Mary Shelley, and contemporary Egyptian archaeologists have in common? And what does it really feel like to touch your own heart, or to have someone else’s beating inside your chest?

This is a fascinating book about the history of the human heart–how it evolved, why it is susceptible to certain diseases, and the origins of study and surgery to diagnose and fix broken hearts. The real-life characters–some forgotten, some famous, and others infamous–are brought to vivid life by Dunn. At times it can be gory (it’s definitely not a book for the faint of heart…terrible pun completely intended), but I learned a lot of really incredible things during this read. This book will appeal to fans of medical history, but there’s really something in it for everyone. After all, every one of us has a currently beating heart.

Review by Heather Morris, Technical Services Associate

Spotlight On: African American Fiction

African American authors are some of the most popular here at Braswell. They cross all genres–from Women’s Fiction to Historical Fiction to Urban Fiction and beyond. Here’s a small sampling of some of our recent African American additions. From award winners to debut authors, we aim to have something to appeal to everyone.

The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

 

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr is the winner of the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When Marie-Laure is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris, and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great-uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel.

In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure’s converge.

If you’re a Braswell patron interested in reading All the Light We Cannot See, remember that you can put it on hold.

Historical Fiction at Braswell

We love historical fiction, for taking us to new places and introducing us to new cultures. Our shelves at Braswell Memorial Library contain a wide variety of historical fiction, but to start with, here are some stellar examples of books that span the remarkable twentieth century.