Posts from Terence Cardinal Cooke-Cathedral Library

Join us for a discussion on Bright Lines at one of our local libraries.

Cathedral Library reopened in October after a year-long renovation, and the result is happy and bright. The green paint, glass door, and books are new. The shelves are festooned with poinsettias that have pages instead of leaves, and the open floor plan invites you in. Books are arranged “like a bookstore,” and a subway map is front and center. But not all of the patrons have returned.

Visit NYPL's BiblioCommons for these lists and many more. You can also create your own and share them with us in the comments! See below for some interesting staff picks from the past month, on topics both timely and timeless:

Genre Fiction While You're Waiting for Fifty Shades of Grey, Try... Comic Books for Adults

With the recent NYT article about clothing stores being the newest places to purchase books highlighting what fashionable items books can be, I thought I’d take a look at some of the books that celebrities have been seen reading. I’ll let you decide if they are actual reads, solely being used as fashion accessories or merely shielding one’s eyes from the sun at some tropical retreat.

Naomi 

"The definition of insanity is continuing to do the same thing over and over, and then expecting different results."

This quotation has been everywhere lately, and is often attributed to Einstein, although there’s no evidence that he ever said it. It does, however, illustrate the importance of change. If you find yourself on the cusp of a change in your life, sometimes books are a good way to explore different careers, lifestyles, whatever, without necessarily committing to a permanent change. Libraries are a great way to explore the "what ifs" in your 

These days, readers no longer need to parade their Fabio-graced romance novels in front of all the other passengers on their train or bus. Instead, they can read them discreetly on their e-readers, but why the concern? I once saw a woman on a bus in Chicago, years ago, with a cannily embroidered book jacket cover that 

Researching ghosts at the library is nothing new. Finding media tie-in books about ghostly television shows is a more recent pursuit. Both can be accomplished at NYPL. On occasion, ghostbusters have even been known to roam the stacks of NYPL’s Stephen A. Schwarzman Building.

In Mary Roach’s book Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife, she discusses several séance experiments in the early 1900s 

Welcome to the wrap-up of our discussion of Kitchen Confidential. We hope that we have inspired you to be adventurous in the kitchen this Thanksgiving holiday [if you happen to be reading this blog from a country that doesn't celebrate Thanksgiving now, then we hope that it has inspired you to be adventurous in the kitchen in general], or at least inspired you to find some tasty reading.

Since Kitchen Confidential is a memoir, many of the scenes in it help us to understand why Anthony Bourdain is so 

Welcome back to this month’s Reader’s Den, co-led by Jenny Baum and Ursula Murphy, about Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly.

Anthony Bourdain is a polarizing figure and, as such, elicits strong responses, as strong as a few politicians I can think of. Cable channels like the Food channel, the newer Cooking channel and the Travel 

Last year I blogged about Halloween movies that were inspired by books. This year, as I ponder what costume I would like to wear, in a season that promises to be rife with Lady Gagas and “The Situation”s, I thought I’d mention a few books that could be (very loosely) interpreted to inspire your own costume selections.

Thank you for participating in this month’s Reader’s Den! If you enjoyed Amberville, try:

Christopher Moore A Dirty Job Jasper Fforde (“Nursery Crimes” series) The Big Over Easy and The Fourth Bear Robert Rankin The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse and The Toyminator  

Tim Davys writes:

“Amberville might have a bit of Chelsea in London, Lanceheim maybe slightly Berlin. If I say Tourquai has a touch of New York and Yok a bit of Rome, I’m not lying. But I’m not telling the whole truth either. The landscape you have in mind most certainly forms the plot. But I’m not sure if that’s important for the reading experience; it’s more of an author’s tool. Every reader then forms their own opinions.”

Compare and contrast the use of setting 

“I loved Emma Rabbit. You shouldn’t be ashamed of your beloved.

Love had come stealthily. Love had waited, lain in wait and attacked when I least expected it.

I’d been defenseless.

The first days I didn’t dare say anything. We attended to our roles as usual. She asked how the night had been, I answered that it had been good. She asked if I wanted to have the window open or closed. I answered closed.

But I answered with a joy that I couldn’t rein in. Love made me strong and exhilarated. It didn’t take 

Welcome to the June 2010 edition of the Reader's Den!

A while ago, babble.com created a list of the 26 Most Disturbing Kids Movies of all time. Watership Down made the list, and if you’ve never read the book by Richard Adams, get yourself a copy, it’s a great book. At any rate, it 

It always bugs me when characters in novels don’t consume any food or drink. Not that the whole novel has to be about that, mind you, but the occasional mention can do so much to create setting.

I recently read that Honoré de Balzac died at age 51 from caffeine overconsumption. I assumed that this must be overstating the case because I 

“When you write, you give your version of reality.” —Maryse Condé

Many, many people have been motivated by the catastrophe in Haiti to donate, including one librarian who donated $10,000 of his personal savings and whose fundraising efforts were picked up by several blogs. Librarians can contribute in a different way, as well, by highlighting the wealth of literature that Haiti and 

Wilkie Collins’s Armadale is one of the Sensation Novels of the Victorian era, full of the kind of 19th-century drama that, especially at the time, had readers on the edges of their seats. Some of the shocking plot developments that made this novel so much of the time were: the character of Lydia Gwilt, a red-headed villainess addicted to laudanum who poisons her husband (and has an unbecoming surname, besides), the “ripped from the headlines” approach that Collins uses to reference newspaper scandals, and the shiny new technologies of the penny post and the 

If you enjoyed reading The Post-Birthday World, you may also like:

The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff