Letters to a Young Brother: Manifest Destiny by Hill Harper

Hill Harper, award-winning actor and star of the hit show CSI: NY provides helpful advice and encouragement to young men in a brother-to-brother letter format.  He addresses topics ranging from dealing with family, friends, and love relationships, to handling money, and dreaming “big”.  He bases his responses to these real questions on his own personal life experiences and those of other successful African-Americans.

Against Medical Advice by James Patterson and Hal Friedman

Cory Friedman is diagnosed with Tourette’s syndrome at the age of five.  He suffers from extreme OCD, has uncontrollable urges to scream and makes violent physical movements.  Cory tells his own very personal story of the many different drug and behavioral treatment programs that he was subjected to over a thirteen year period.   Cory’s struggle for a cure and the pervasive effect on his family is a very personal, moving account of a frequently misunderstood disease.

Snowflower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See

Lily, now age 80 recalls her life in rural China during the 19^th century when foot binding, arranged marriages and the belief that a woman’s only role was to have sons were the norm.  Lily and Snowflower, a supposedly wealthier, better educated girl from a larger town, become laotong, bond for life.  Readers will be riveted on this fascinating story of an enduring relationship that weathers spousal abuse, jealousy, poverty, death, and political instability.

Executive Privilege by Philip Margolin

Private detective, Dana Cutler, is hired by a powerful attorney to follow Charlotte Walsh, a college intern at the White House suspected of having an affair with the President.  She takes some pictures and then is accosted by some secret service agents.  Dana gets away, but the secret service agents manage to get Dana’s license plate.  The next day she learns that Charlotte was found dead.  Dana and Brad Miller, a junior associate in a law firm, become involved in a life-threatening search for an evil serial killer who has victims on both U.S. coasts.

The Secret Between Us by Barbara Delinsky

One rainy night, Deborah Monroe, a recently divorced, family physician picks her teenage daughter, Grace, up from a friend’s party.  Grace has her driving permit and is at the wheel when she hits a man jogging along the road who turns out to be her history teacher, Mr. McKenna.  With the best of intentions, Deborah lets the police assume she was driving and fills out a police report to that effect.   After Mr.McKenna dies, Grace is devastated by her own guilt and her mother’s lies while the secret threatens to destroy the entire family.

The Shop on Blossom Street by Debbie Macomber

In celebration of life, cancer survivor Lydia Hoffman opens a knitting store, A Good Yarn, in Seattle.  She offers a knitting class in hopes of meeting people and attracting business.  The first project, a baby blanket, brings together four very unique women, each with her own set of challenges.  This is the first book in this popular Blossom Street series.

Discussion dates/times/place:

Chester campus:  Tuesday, Oct. 26 (12-12:45) and Wednesday, Oct. 27 (12-12:45) in the Nicholas Center, room 102A

Midlothian campus:  Tuesday, Oct. 26 (12-12:45) and Wednesday, Oct. 27 (12-12:45) room TBA

Questions? Contact Penny Speidel pspeidel@jtcc.edu, Mattie Coll mcoll@jtcc.edu, and Judy Johnson jjohnson@jtcc.edu for more information.

All work and no fun reading make Jane a dull girl, right? The library also has popular titles available in the library–and the comfortable chairs to go with them. These cover many areas of interest, from fashion to sports to art.

Check out some of the titles on this page or go directly to this PDF (you will need Adobe Acrobat).

Each campus has its own collection. Favorites include:

• Consumer Reports
• Psychology Today
• Rolling Stone
• Sports Illustrated
• Vogue
• Washington Post (Sunday only)
• Wired

Current issues are available for reading in the library, and back issues maybe be checked out for one week. Why buy it in the supermarket checkout when you can get it in the library for free?

Or in other words, cavemen ARE us!

The August 2010 issue of Scientific American has two articles about human origins, including the editorial making the Neanderthal/Homo sapiens connection.

When the Sea Saved Humanity by Curtis W. Marean

Our Neanderthal Brethren by Michael Shermer

The genome article is in the 7 May 2010 issue of Science.

A Draft Sequence of the Neandertal Genome

Science and Scientific American are also available in print form at the library for browsing or checkout.

Want to know more? Search for books in the library’s Anthropology section, starting with call number GN.

With The Passage, Justin Cronin leaves the literary arena behind (he won the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award and the Stephen Crane Prize for his past novels) and leaps (bat like!) into the world of speculative fiction. But this is no teenage love story, or southern waitress’s adventure. Cronin’s world of vampires is monstrous, terrifying, and more than plausible. In Cronin’s near future gas is $13/gallon, the FBI works illegally and without accountability, California secedes from the union, and Jenna Bush is Governor of Texas.

The military engineers a virus designed to heal wounds and extend human life….and all goes terribly wrong. The virus escapes the bunker and spreads across the country; millions succumb. Life as we know it is OVER.

100 years later, a colony of 94 people survive under the lights, lights maintained by a battery system that is deteriorating fast. When the lights go out (the lights keep the virus away) so will this last scrap of humanity.

A silent child arrives alone at the gate to the colony. How did she survive? Is she the key to the future?

The Passage is an epic work (700 + pages, first in a trilogy) with multiple characters and plotlines. It reads like both as a terrifying history and a sci-fi adventure thriller. Director Ridley Scott bought the movie rights BEFORE the book was published. Buzz has been building, most of it positive. Fans of intelligent speculative fiction should jump on the train NOW before it reaches epic proportions.

The Passage checked out? Try more of the literary/speculative fiction genre with these titles at the John Tyler Library:

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

The Year of the Flood and Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr.

Dune by Frank Herbert

The library reduces hours between semesters (not open until 9!) but is still available for registration, computer use, and general questions.

The details:

Monday, August 9 Last Day of Classes/Exams for summer session: 7:30 a.m. – 9:00 p.m.

Tuesday, August 10–Wednesday August 11:  7:30 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.

Thursday, August 12: 7:30 a.m. – 7:00 p.m.

Friday, August 13: 7:30 a.m. -5:00 p.m.

Saturday August 14: Closed

Monday, August 16-Thursday August 19: 7:30 a.m. –7:00 p.m.

Friday, August 20 (Convocation): 10:15 a.m.- 5:00 p.m.

Saturday August 21: Closed

Monday, August 23: First day of fall semester

Normal hours (7:30 a.m. – 9:00 p.m.) resume

Questions? Call us!

Chester: 706-5195

Midlothian: 594-1519

Food itself (organic, sustainable, local) is in the news. No longer are American fed by our own family’s farms; now our dinner is dished out by big agribusiness. Do factory farms make us sick? Does the American diet provide the nutrition we need? How do we fight the obesity epidemic for ourselves and our children?

Small farmers and food reformers are working to change the grip of big business on our appetites. Read more about how and why with these books from the JTCC Library.

Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan. The book that started it all! Pollan traces dinner back to its beginnings, in the field, in the stockyards, in the lab. He asks, “What should we have for dinner?”

In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto by Michael Pollan. “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual by Michael Pollan. Collection of quick tips on what to eat and why.

Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating with 75 Recipes by Mark Bittman.  The author of “How to Cook Everything” takes a look at his own diet and changes it radically. Food Matters combines a no-nonsense diet guide with a healthy recipe collection.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver: Barbara Kingsolver (and her family) vows to eat within 100 miles of home for one year, and write about it. Dad and teenage daughter also contribute.

The Town that Food Saved: How One Community Found Vitality in Local Food by Ben Hewitt.  Profile of the agri-entrepreneurs of Hardwick, who both created a sustainable food system and kick-started the local economy.

Stuck without a flash drive? No access to a desktop computer?

Create and load your documents into Google Documents. Google Docs comes automatically with John Tyler email. Have access to all of your docs anywhere with an internet connection or smart phone. No flash drive needed!

With Google docs you can:

• Upload any file for simple access
• Create documents, spreadsheets and presentations. No need to purchase Microsoft Office.
• Share your work in real time with the collaboration tool.

Find the link to Google docs on your JTCC email page.

Need more information? Check out the videos and tutorials on the Google Docs page.

King begins with the dawn of time in the Chaudet Cave, where prehistoric humans painted images of aurouchs, mammoth, and deer on the walls. Dogs likely walked over the Bering Strait with the first Americans; 10,000 year old canine and human bones in were discovered in Utah’s Danger Cave. King discusses modern times with animals that populate our homes and our landscapes, from Mister Ed the Talking Horse to the bison of Yellowstone National Park. Included is an extensive index and bibliography. King is an anthropologist at William and Mary; Being with Animals gives an academic slant on a popular topic.

Need more time with critters? Try these from the collections of the John Tyler Libraries:

Marley and Me by John Grogan.

Adventures with the world’s worst dog? You decide!

Dewey, the Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World by Vicki Myron.

A tiny kitten is pushed through a Midwestern library’s bookdrop on the coldest day of the year. Dewey Readmore Books becomes the library’s mascot and the community’s glue during hard times.

Animals Make Us Human by Temple Grandin.

Grandin, who is autistic, describes the internal life of animals with her unique brand of insight.

One Good Dog by Susan Wilson. CEO loses his job, his wife and his home, but finds a homeless dog and learns to really live. Nice dog photo on cover!

Alice Fantastic by Maggie Estep.

Two daughters-one an artist, one a professional gambler-are forced to care for their ailing bohemian mother and her 20 rescue dogs. The human and animal characterizations are excellent.

A Year of Cats and Dogs by Margaret Hawkins (staff favorite!)

When her longtime boyfriend moves out, Maryanne decides to withdraw from life, take a career break, and just be. In the quiet of this life, she realizes she can hear her cat Clement and dog Bob thinking. Magical realism is handled expertly by this first time novelist.

Charlottesville resident Rita Mae Brown and her feline co-author Sneaky Pie Brown have collaborated on multiple mysteries. Try Puss ‘n Cahoots or The Purrrfect Murder.

Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand. The story of the famous racehorse and the men who trained him; also made into a movie.

Dogs that Changed the World (audiobook narrated by F. Murray Abraham). Download the tale of how indispensable dogs have been to humans throughout history.

Dogtown:  tales of rescue, rehabilitation, and redemption by Stefan Bechtel. Dogtown chronicles the lives of the veterinarians, trainers, volunteers and dogs of Best Friends Animal Sanctuary. (This is the companion book to the National Geographic Series.)

• Monday, July 5. Closed.
  
• Tuesday, July 6  & Wednesday, July 7. Open 7:30 AM -5:00 PM
• Thursday, July 8.  Open 7:30 AM -7:00 PM (this is a change)
  
• Friday, July 9. Open 7:30 AM -5:00 PM
  
• Saturday, July 10. CLOSED

Libraries will resume normal hours Monday, July 12.

Ashanti Luke, Author of Dusk

On July 3, Local author and JTCC adjunct English Professor Ashanti Luke will be giving a reading of his novel Dusk at the Colonial Heights Public Library. After the reading, there will be a short question and answer session. Copies of Dusk will be available for purchase and signing at the reading.

From the back cover:

With the Earth overpopulated and polluted, a group of twenty premier scientists must depart on a mission to explore Asha-a distant, uninhabited planet that may offer solutions to humanity’s burgeoning problems. But when they arrive at Asha, the scientists are brusquely greeted by a mysterious human military force that imprisons them with no explanation.

Astrophysicist Cyrus Chamberlain is among those who left behind their old lives and risked everything on this journey. Unfortunately for Dr. Chamberlain, he finds that even if he survives the many challenges this new world holds for him, he may have already lost more than he ever imagined.

Check out an the first few chapters of the novel, become a fan on Facebook, or find out more information about the book signing on the author’s website, http://ashantiluke.com/home.html.

Cannot make the signing? John Tyler Libraries have a copy of Dusk for checkout.