The Short List

Our New Release Alerts Service isn’t new, but we wanted to refresh your memory about what a great thing it is. There are thousands of books published in the US every month; many will go unnoticed but others will quickly become bestsellers which also are highly sought-after in libraries by patrons.

The New Release Alerts page on our website is updated every month with 15-20, or so, books to be released by publishers in the next 60-90 days which we believe will be of popular interest to our patrons. We provide a link to each of these books in our catalog which allows patrons to put a hold on the book even before the Library has its copy–and perhaps before the 200 other interested patrons get in the queue. Nice, right?

The New Release Alerts also include books which are expected to be bestsellers even though they’re not by A-List authors or coming from well-known publishers. Recent examples include: The Story Of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski, The Beach House by Jane Green and Love The One You’re With by Emily Giffin.

Click here to see July’s New Release Alerts.

The what? “The Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award is an annual award of 35,000 euros, ( almost $55,000) as such it is currently the world’s richest prize for the short story form. The award is in memory of the late Frank O’Connor, one of the world’s most renowned short story writers. The award is presented in O’Connor’s hometown of Cork, Ireland. It is organised by the Munster Literature Centre and funded by Cork City Council in association with the Irish Times.. The award goes to the author of the book judged to be the best collection of stories published in English for the first time anywhere in the world in the twelve months between September of one year and August of the next. If a translated book wins, the purse is shared equally between the author and translator.”

This year, the jury, in an unprecedented move, dispensed with a short list for the award and announced the winner outright: Jhumpa Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth. Patrick Cotter, Director of the Award said: “With a unanimous winner at this early stage we decided it would be a sham to compose a shortlist and put five other writers through unnecessary stress and suspense. Not only were the jury unanimous in their choice of Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth as the winner, they were unanimous in their belief that so outstanding was Lahiri’s achievement in this book that no other title was a serious contender.”

Jhumpa Lahiri was born in England, in 1967, to Bengali parents who moved to America when she was three. Her first collection of short stories, Interpreter of Maladies, won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize – and sold 600,000 copies. Her 2003 novel, The Namesake, was made into a successful film of the same name. Ms Lahiri lives in New York with her husband and two children.

As part of our summer reading theme we’re showing movies every Wednesday from 3-5p.m. in July. Here is the schedule:

July 2 “Antz” Rated PG

July 9 “Charlotte’s Web” Rated G

July 16 “Akeelah and the Bee” Rated PG

July 23 “A Bug’s Life” Rated PG

July 30 “Bee Movie” Rated PG

Catch the Reading Bug @ Your Library.

The Summer Reading Program is open to children of all ages from preschool through high school. Children must read 10 hours to complete the Summer Reading Program. Great prizes that children will earn by completing the Summer Reading Program are: An Ice Cream Cone from Sweet P’s on Main St in Essex, Tickets to a CT Defenders Game or a New Britain Rock Cats Game, and several others that have not been confirmed yet… Many thanks to the generous sponsors of the Essex Summer Reading Program.

Check our website for a complete list of summer activities for kids. http://www.essexlib.org/services-childrens.html

Great news! The Russell Library in Middletown is joining the Wallingford Public Library in allowing LION patrons to place holds on most of the materials in their adult collections including: new books, DVDs and music CDs. Both Wallingford and Russell have great collections and this change should make for a wonderful opportunity to have easier access to them. In addition, on July 1, the Case Memorial Library in Orange, CT will join the LION consortium and its materials will also become available to other LION patrons.

The long-awaited announcement of this year’s Dublin Prize is finally here. The winner is De Niro’s Game by Rawi Hage. Hage beat out 136 other authors to win the 100,000 euro prize. See the longlist titles here and the shortlist titles here.

“De Niro’s Game is told through the eyes of Bassam, as he grows up with his childhood friend George, in war-ravaged Beirut. As the young men reach adulthood they must choose their futures: to stay in the city and embrace a life of crime or go into exile abroad, alienated from the only existence they have known.”

Previous winners of the prestigious award include:
Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson (2007) and The Master by Colm Tóibín (2006)

Another successful booksale has added nearly $5,000 to the Friends’ coffers which allows them to support the Library in many ways: by paying for museum passes, books for babies, welcome bags, myriad programs and much else. The engine behind all these successful sales is Dee Grover but Dee would be the first to say she couldn’t manage it well without all the help she gets from many other volunteers. Our hats are off to all who helped with the sale and to all who helped make the sale so successful with donations and purchases.

All booksale items will be half-price through June and there are many wonderful books, hardcover and paperback, still on the sale shelves so come in and browse as they are replenished daily.

Would you like to visit the Wadsworth Atheneum, New Britain Museum of American Art or the Florence Griswold Museum for free? The Essex Library offers passes for free admission for 4 people to those museums - and more, thanks to a generous donation by the Friends of the Essex Library.

Current exhibits at the Florence Griswold include: Impressionist Giverny: Americans Painters in France, 1885–1915, an exhibition of over fifty works organized by the Musée d’Art Américain, Giverny. The exhibition tells the story of the expatriate colony founded by American artists in the village of Impressionist master Claude Monet.

The New Britain Museum of American Art’s current exhibits include: an exhibition featuring 60 works of California Impressionist art, All Things Bright and Beautiful: California Impressionist Paintings, from The Irvine Museum, from April 1-June 29, 2008.

One of the current exhibits at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art is: the Faith & Fortune exhibition that has been extended through 2008! It features five centuries of European masterworks. Including sacred art by such great painters as Caravaggio, Fra Angelico and Gentileschi. And decorative art once owned by history’s wealthiest families.

We add new titles to the Overdrive downloadable audio books every month. here are a few of April’s new titles:

Bad Money by Kevin Phillips

Beautiful Boy by David Sheff

Belong To Me by Marisa de los Santos

The Girl Of His Dreams by Donna Leon

God’s Problem by Bart Ehrman

Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri

A Voyage Long And Strange by Tony Horwitz

Richard Morgan’s novel Black Man, “a science fiction thriller, which follows a black, genetically-modified assassin, or Variant Thirteen, in pursuit of a serial killer,” has won the 2008 Arthur C. Clarke award for science fiction. The annual award is presented for best science fiction novel of the year and selected from a list of novels whose UK first edition was published in the previous calendar year.

“There has been a lot of controversy about this year’s shortlist,” Morgan said. “It’s nice to have won against the mainstream contenders because it shows the genre has tremendous self-confidence.”

The shortlist included The Red Men by Matthew de Albuitia, The H-Bomb Girl by Stephen Baxter, The Carhullan Army by Sarah Hall, The Raw Shark Texts by Stephen Hall and The Execution Channel by Ken MacLeod.

This year’s Nebula Awards, sponsored by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, were announced this past weekend at the Nebula Awards banquet in Austin, Tex.:

• Novel: The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon
• Scripts: Pan’s Labyrinth by Guillermo del Toro