Thanks to all the buzz for Twilight , Forks Washington where the story takes place is getting a ton of attention. While the story of Bella and the Cullens is fictional, Forks Washington is very real. The town has seen an increase in tourism. Fans are swarming Forks to see places like the LaPush beach and Forks High School. For Twilight lovers, this trip is a must! Read more about Forks here And for more info take a look at this article here

Congratulations to Peter Matthiessen and Annette Gordon-Reed for winning the Fiction and Non-Fiction 2008 National Book Award for their books Shadow Country and The Hemingses of Monticell: An American Family. Judy Blendell's What I Saw and How I Lied won the prize for Young People's Literature.

The latest book from J.K. Rowling, The Tales of Beedle the Bard, comes out on December 4. Albus Dumbledore left this collection of five fairy tales to Hermione Granger in his will. This edition includes commentary and footnotes from Dumbledore. Originally there were only seven handmade editions of this book, illustrated by Rowling and decorated with silver and jewels. Six of them were given as thank-you gifts to people closely associated with the Harry Potter series. The seventh was auctioned off to benefit the charity, The Children's Voice. That copy was purchased by Amazon.com for $3.98 million. Checkout some pictures of it here.

Have you ever felt like you should read a book just because it is considered a classic? Have you ever started reading one of the classics & forced yourself to finish it, even though it kept putting you to sleep? Or maybe you had to read it because it was on a summer reading list. Well, you are not alone. Author Shannon Hale (Princess Academy, Book of a Thousand Days) recently wrote an article for School Library Journal where she talks about "overcoming the classics". It's very funny and we can all relate!

http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6600686.html?q=how+reader+girl+got+her+groove+back

Yikes -- Thanksgiving is just 8 days away. Need ideas for a new side dish, vegetable or dessert this year? Check out our display in the front of the library for some great Thanksgiving cookbooks, Gourmet & Bon Appétit Magazines, etc. We also suggest Epicurious, Allrecipes and the Food Network websites for more recipe hints and ideas.

All of us at the library hope our patrons enjoy the holiday in the company of family and friends.

Happy Thanksgiving!

This series of eight books focus on one of the eight incarnations of immortality (Death, Time, Fate, War, Nature, Evil, Good and Night) in a fictional reality and history parallel to ours, with the exception that society has advanced both magic and modern technology. The first is On a Pale Horse by Piers Anthony.

You can be an armchair traveler by reading some great books we have in the library and then visit some cool sites in New York City and Long Island to get a feel for the settings of the books.
One of my favorite areas of Manhattan is downtown -- and it also happens to be the perfect place for a staycation! You can visit Italy, Ireland and China within a few subway stops.
Henry and the Kite Dragon by Bruce Edward Hall tells the story of children from Chinatown who argue with the children from Little Italy for throwing rocks at the beautiful kites Grandfather Chin makes, not realizing that they have a reason for doing so. Go to Little Italy and have lunch. I like Puglia's (pronounced poo-lia's) -- try the fried zucchini, it's the best!
In Chinatown find a street vendor that sells little round pancakes that taste like fortune cookies. My dad would always buy them for me when I was a kid.
Susan Campbell Bartoletti's Black Potatoes: The Story of the Great Irish Famine does a fantastic job of bringing this tragedy to life and Battery Park has it's own
Irish Hunger Memorial where you can get a feel for Ireland by winding your way though plants native to Ireland and the ruins of a stone cottage.

Metropolitan Museum of Art is so fun and has so much to see, my favorite place is the Temple of Dendur. There are probably hundreds of books you could associate with the Met. Here are just a few:
A Nickel, A Trolley, A Treasure House by Sharon Reiss Baker
From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg
Museum Shapes and Museum ABC
You Can't Take a Balloon into the Metropolitan Museum by Jacqueline Preiss Weitzman

Read a biography of Teddy Roosevelt and then visit his "summer White House" in Oyster Bay, Sagamore Hill. (Or read the very funny biography of his daughter, What to do About Alice?: How Alice Roosevelt Broke the Rules, Charmed the World, and Drove Her Father Teddy Crazy! by Barbara Kerley)

Take a stroll across the Brooklyn Bridge then take a rest and read Twenty-one Elephants and Still Standing : A Story of P.T. Barnum and the Brooklyn Bridge by April Jones Prince

If you're looking for a good read try The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. Nobody Owens (aka Bod) is a normal teenager...except he has been raised by ghosts in a graveyard.

Not only has the book gotten great reviews & become a #1 bestseller, but Neil Gaiman has just announced that he will be producing a live action film based on the book. This promises to be another exciting book to film adaptation!

The Endless (Destiny, Death, Dream, Destruction, Despair, Desire and Delirium) are a group of beings who embody powerful forces or aspects of the universe in the Vertigo comic book series The Sandman, by Neil Gaiman. They have existed since the dawn of time. THE SANDMAN Check it out!!!

Last week, we posted information on the Fiction finalists for the 2008 National Book Award. The following books are nominated for the Non-Fiction prize:

This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War by Drew Gilpin Faust
The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family by Annette Gordon-Reed
The Dark Side:The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals
Final Salute: A Story of Unfinished Lives by Jim Sheeler
The Suicide Index: Putting My Father’s Death in Order by Joan Wickersham

The 59th annual National Book Awards Ceremony will be held on November 19, 2008 at Cipriani, Wall Street in New York City and I'll be sure to let you know the winners.

Is that what your kids say at night? Well there is a great website and podcast called JustOneMoreBook.com Andrea Ross and Mark Blevis review books as well as interview authors and discuss issues regarding chidlren and reading. It's a great place to get ideas about what to read to your kids next, not to mention asking your local librarian (you can't blame me for a little self-promotion). Andrea and Mark are the parents of two young girls and IT professionals working in Canada. They broadcast from a coffee shop in Ottawa, Canada -- so those clinking-mugs and foaming-milk sounds in the background are real!

Now that October is over (the month when those torturous S.A.T. exams rear their ugly heads) some of you are probably beginning the college application process. To help make it easier, why not check out www.unigo.com? Unigo is a social networking site (like Facebook or Myspace) that lets members connect with students who attend colleges and universities throughout the US. Get the real dirt on life at the college of your choice by reading reviews, looking at pictures and watching videos of your top choices.

Babylon A.D. the movie starring Vin Diesel is going to be released on dvd. The movie which was considered rotten by the critics is actually based on a novel by Maurice Dantec. The novel is better!

The National Book Award fiction finalists for 2008 include some well-known and a few new authors. The five nominees are The Lazarius Project by Aleksandar Hemon, Shadow Country by veteran author Peter Matthiessen (a co-founder of the Paris Review), The End, a first novel from Salvatore Scibona, Home by Pulitzer Prize winning author Marilynne Robinson, Telex from Cuba, a debut novel by Rachel Kushner.

The winners will be announced at a ceremony in NYC next month on November 19th.

Sad that Halloween is over and now it's another 364 days before more free candy?! Well here's a cure for the post-Halloween blues -- author and illustrator Adam Rex has released Frankenstein Takes the Cake, a sequel to his hysterical book Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich. Full of monsters, comic strips, fake blogs and poems, both books are full of Rex's great artwork and irreverent sense of humor. Visit Rex's website to see more of his artwork and learn about some of the other books he's written and illustrated, including The True Meaning of Smekday.