Catalog

Did you know that January is National Soup Month?  Makes sense, right?  January is the first full month of Winter, and aside from cold soups like gazpacho, soups are traditionally craved, crafted, and consumed during the colder months of the year.

If you want to celebrate National Soup Month by trying your hand at making soup, HCPL has got you covered!  You may know that the Dewey Decimal number for general cookbooks is 641.5, but did you know that soup cookbooks have their very own Dewey number?  It's 641.813.  Of course, many general cookbooks have soup recipes in them, but if you're looking exclusively for soup recipes, you should start at 641.813.  Here are a few of the titles you'll find there:

• 300 Sensational Soups by Carla Snyder & Meredith Deeds
• An Exaltation of Soups: The Soul-Satisfying Story of Soup, as Told in More than 100 Recipes by Patricia Solley
• New Orleans Classic Gumbos & Soups by Kit Wohl
• Soup of the Day by Kate McMillan
• The Soup Peddler's Slow & Difficult Soups: Recipes & Reveries by David Ansel

I'm a big fan of lists, and particularly year-end lists.  A simple Google search will probably direct you to several different personal blogs on which I have published my end-of-year favorite music lists over the past eight years or so.  For me, lists are intended both as a form of self-analysis and as recommendations for my (modest, random) readership. 

I am also a bit unconventional with these lists.  I care less about the year that something was made than the year that I first experienced it.  So, on the following list, you will find my 20 favorite books that I read (for the first time) in 2012.  Some of the titles were published this year, others were written over a half-century ago.  But they are all great books that you should read, and they are all, incidentally, in HCPL's catalog.  So without further ado,

20 Books for 2012:

(1)

White Teeth by Zadie Smith (a gateway book if there ever was one, see below)

(2)

The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

(3)

Cathedral by Raymond Carver

(4)

Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney

(5)

Zeitoun by Dave Eggers

Have you noticed a rash of moustaches sprouting up in the last few weeks, perhaps on some folks who really have no business dealing in moustachery?  Has Whisker Wars really had that much of an effect on our cultural makeup?

The explanation is simple.  In facial hair circles, November is referred to as Movember or No Shave November, a month dedicated to the growth of moustaches and/or facial hair.  Some do it for fun or bragging rights, or for an excuse to buy moustache wax.  Others do it with a cause in mind.  The organization Movember in particular uses the month as a platform to "raise vital awareness and funds for men's health issues, specifically prostate and testicular cancer initiatives."

While Movember 2012 is almost through, you can educate yourself year-round on both moustaches and men's health issues at your local library.  And if you're anything like me, there's always Mocember, Monuary, Mobruary, and so on.

A few mustachioed titles for kids (click on the image to go to catalog):

This Sunday, November 11th, formerly known in the U.S. as Armistice Day, would have been my favorite writer, Kurt Vonnegut’s 90th birthday.  In Charles J. Shields’ 2011 biography of Vonnegut, And So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut: A Life, he wrote that Vonnegut “was quite proud of being born on a day associated with peace.”  A noted and well-known Humanist, that’s the kind of fellow that Kurt Vonnegut struck me as: a peacekeeper. 

Vonnegut is best known for his novel Slaughterhouse-Five, the semi-autobiographical story of Billy Pilgrim, who becomes “unstuck in time”, and which reflects the post-traumatic stress of Vonnegut’s personal experience of the bombing of Dresden.  But Vonnegut did not just write novels: he was also an essayist, a playwright, and a writer of short stories.  His bibliography is quite extensive, and still expanding, and well worth your time, though some works are perhaps more worthwhile than others.  

As someone who has made his way through the majority (though not all) of Vonnegut’s work, I have taken it upon myself to curate a list of some of my favorite Vonnegut books that we have here at HCPL in hopes that it will serve as something of a primer and inspiration for those interested in diving deeper into the Vonneverse.

Novels:

God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater: or, Pearls Before Swine
Cat’s Cradle
Slaughterhouse-Five: or, The Children’s Crusade, a Duty-Dance with Death
Timequake
Bluebeard
Jailbird

Short Stories & Essays:

Welcome to the Monkey House
Look at the Birdie
While Mortals Sleep
A Man Without a Country
Armageddon in Retrospect
We Are What We Pretend to Be: First and Last Works (Released 10/9)

Miscellany:

Kurt Vonnegut: Letters edited by Dan Wakefield (Released 10/30)
And So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut: A Life by Charles Shields

Did you know that Harris County Public Library is constantly adding new titles to its collection?  DVDs, CDs, audiobooks, Adult Fiction, Adult Nonfiction, YA, Juvenile Nonfiction - you name it.

Near the beginning of each month, a New Titles report is run, which lists all of the titles that have been added to the collection in the past 30 days by category, as well as the Most Requested and Most Circulated Titles of the past month, including the most requested titles we have On Order.  These lists provide handy, one-click shortcuts to each title's record in our catalog, so that you may request it on the spot using your Library Card Number and PIN, even (as is the case for On Order items) before some of the titles are even in circulation.

Many of our new arrivals have long waitlists.  Consider this service a sort of express pass to the front of the line.  To get to the New Titles report page, first head to our website, HCPL.net.  From there, hover over the Books & Media tab and select New Titles.  It's a great resource, and, if nothing else, it puts a sort of timestamp on our collection's evolutionary process and, if you follow through to the record, it shows you which new titles are most popular (in demand anyway) among HCPL patrons.