Need Something to Read?

Hi All,

Its summertime and the reading is good!  What? you say?  Read in the summer? Absolutely - its a great time to dig in to a book that will enthrall you, excite you and just darn keep you entertained!

How can you beat that introduction?

Forthwith - a bunch of links to 'best' of type lists of books.  The only difference is that these will be books in various categories.

General Fiction - Modern Library 100 Best Novels 

Library Thing - Best Contemporary Literary Fiction - over the last 30 years  

Science Fiction - NPR - Your Picks - Top 100 Science-Fiction/Fantasy Books

Fantasy - Paste Magazine - 30 Best Fantasy Book Series of All Time

Fantasy - Fantasy Book Review- UK - Top 100 Fantasy Books

Mystery - BestMysteryBooks.com - Top 25 Best Mystery Books

Horror - Worlds Without End - Nightmare Magazine's Top 100 Horror Books

Romance - Bustle - 13 Romance Novels That Should Be On Every Woman's Bucket List

Western - Western Writers of America - Best Western Novels of the 20th Century

So now that you have an impressive list of books to choose from, where do you find these books? At the library of course.  Click on this link to go to the library card catalog to see if the book that you are interested in is on the shelf!

So...with that list I would think most people's interests would be piqued. If I missed a genre/style of writing that you would like to see, email me by clicking on this link!

Enjoy the books and writing!

Regards,
Stu

End of the Year Lists - Part I

Hi All,

So we have 12 days left until the new year comes around.  2015 here we come!  With that in mind, lots of news sources and outlets come out with various 2014 lists.  Here are some of the highlights (and hopefully the best - or at least the most interesting) of these lists. 

And please note, there just might be a second part to this entry since there are so many interesting lists available on the web. Stay tuned for the next episode!!!

Science Announces 2014's Top 10 Breakthroughs
PC Mag - 10 Best Desktops
PC Mag - 10 Best Laptops
TechRadar - 10 Best Tablet PCs in the World Today
Car and Driver - Editors' Choice Awards 2014 - Best Cars, Trucks, Crossovers and More.
Gayot - Top 10 Fall Beers
Wine Spectator - Top 10 Wines Revealed
National Geographic - Best Winter Trips 2014
Vogue - Top Ten TV Shows of 2014
IMDB - Highest Rated TV Series Released in 2014
Mother Jones - Best Books of 2014 (Fiction and Non-fiction)
Washington Post - 10 Best Books of 2014
Yahoo! News - Yahoo's Top 10 News Searches of 2014
Washington Times - Celebrity Deaths in 2014
Bing Link to People, Moments, and Events That Shaped 2014.
CNN - What You Really Googled in 2014

Enjoy the links - and stay tuned for part two of this list in the coming days!

Regards,
Stu

Calling All Readers, Calling All Readers...

Hi All,

Just want to get back to some grass roots librarianship today. So, you've been reading a really, really great book by XYZ - and you want to find books with similar themes and topics to this one.

Where you you go?

Never fear, Novelist Plus is here! Click here for a link to the database. Alternatively, you can visit the library website by clicking on this link and then clicking on the 'Reference' tab. Click on the Literature tab. Novelist Plus is the fifth entry in the list under Literature. (Just remember to have your valid Farmingdale PL library card handy since you'll need to enter the barcode to gain access to the database.)

So, what exactly is Novelist Plus? Well, Novelist Plus (hereafter denoted 'NP') is an online database that all Farmingdale Public Library patrons have free access to. Specifically Novelist Plus lets users search among hundreds of thousands of popular fiction (made up) and non-fiction (real topics) to get summaries of books. Users can retriever author read-alikes, book lists, book discussion guides and more!

Users can also search by author, title, book series title and more. Advanced searching lets users search by genre, Dewey Decimal Classification number and by review.

One very new feature that Novelist has recently added is a section of reviews by readers. These reviews come from a website called Goodreads. Note that Goodreads has thousands upon thousands of reviews of well, thousands upon thousands of books.

You can visit Goodreads.com by clicking on this link.

Hope this entry helps you find books that you really, really want to read!

Regards,
Stu