Readers' Services
The Readers’ Services staff can help you find specific materials and can offer reading suggestions. Please phone (847) 448-8620 for assistance. Use Novelist, to find reviews, reading guides, and reading lists for fiction lovers.
Seraphine
Seraphine. 2010. (DVD 791.4372 Seraphi)
An unforgettable performance by Belgian actress Yolande Moreau highlights this moving film based the life of visionary French painter Seraphine de Senlis. Born in central France in 1864, she worked as a housecleaner and laundress in the years before World War I and began painting at the age of 41. Untrained as an artist, she was inspired by her religious fervor and guided by a guardian angel to create vibrant paintings of flowers, fruit, and trees using colors and pigments she made herself from secret ingredients. Although mocked by the local townspeople, her need to paint never wavered. With the encouragement of a famous German art critic, Seraphine was able to continue painting, yet grew more manic and delusional with the passage of time. Not your usual biopic fare, this film deserved its seven Cesar awards, including Best Picture and Best Actress. Don’t miss the gallery of Seraphine’s paintings on the DVD extras. (Laura H., Reader's Services)
The Search: How Google and its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed our Culture
Battelle, John. The Search: How Google and its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed our Culture. 2005. (338.761004 Google Batte.J)
Every day, with a click, hundreds of millions of people search: for news, for deals, for jobs, for love. Google has become the primary gateway for instant knowledge. Its archives are, increasingly, the “database of the world’s intentions,” to use John Battelle’s apt phrase. Battelle lucidly explains the search technologies (such as PageRank, kind of an instant measure of webpage popularity) that fueled Google’s rise to dominance. He also traces the personal histories and goals of its founders. The book appeared four years ago, but most of Battelle's explanations remain valid. (Jeff B., Reader's Services)
The Glass Castle: a Memoir
Walls, Jeannette. The Glass Castle: a Memoir. 2005. (B Walls. J. Walls. J)
The Walls' children's determination to flourish in the face of their parents' eccentric lifestyle (including nomadic relocating, homelessness, and dangerous neglect) is nothing short of remarkable. Their mother was a free-spirited artist who tended to be self-absorbed, while their father drank too much, although he was happy to teach them about astronomy or nature when he was sober. Frank, painful, and inspiring, Walls' writing will resonate long after you finish the book. (Shira S.)
The Man from Beijing
Mankell, Henning. The Man from Beijing. 2010. (Fiction Manke.H)
What do they do up in the cold winters of Sweden when darkness descends for nigh on 24 hours of the day? I know--they must fill the time by writing best-sellers!
Hard on the heels of Stieg Larsson's popular trilogy beginning with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Henning Mankell offers us another complex thriller set in Sweden, but also takes us far afield to China, the U.S., Africa and England. Judge Brigitta Roslin, a middle-aged woman who is overworked and in a marital slump, is surprised to be notified as next of kin of two residents of a tiny village who are among vicitms of a sensational crime in which nineteen mostly elderly people have been brutally and inexplicably slaughtered. Though only distantly connected to the couple, she decides to go to the tiny village to find out more during a two-week medical leave. So begins her amateur sleuthing, and so begins Mankell's twisty tale of murder, revenge, international intrigue, and political corruption at the highest levels.
Shades of Grey: The Road to High Saffron
Fforde, Jasper. Shades of Grey: The Road to High Saffron. 2009. (Fiction Fford.J) (YA Fiction Fford.J)
Imagine a future about 500 years after the cataclysmic “Something That Happened” where there is a dire shortage of natural color. Vast systems of underground pipelines deliver artificial color to liven up an otherwise drab existence. Social status is based on a colortocracy. Humans have lost the ability to perceive most natural colors, and are limited to seeing just one. If you can see natural yellow or purple, you’re on the top tiers of a strict hierarchy, and have the right and responsibility to boss everyone else around. Seeing red, blue, or green moves you a few notches downward. If you’re a Grey you're at the bottom of the heap, and you’re relegated to jobs of drudgery as well as being the most bossed around members of society. Color issues aside, there are rules and more rules—what you can wear when, what time you can play sports, penalties for being late to lunch, and many more nonsensical regulations that leave even the ruling elite befuddled.
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