Happy π Day!

Hurray for everyone’s favorite mathematical constant, π (pi), representing the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter!

Just in case you are new to Pi Day – the first three digits of pi are 3.14. Today is March 14 (3/14), hence pi day, a day celebrated the world over with math and baked goods. In the spirit of the day, here are some books you might like to enjoy while you are taking advantage of a homophonic coincidence to eat pie.

And for those that prefer a little fiction with their math, here are some novels in which math (or mathematicians) plays a prominent role.

The Weird & Wonderful World with Mary Roach

Online Program, Wednesday, March 1, 2023 from 7:00pm – 8:00pm

Experience an entertaining and hilarious evening with New York Times bestselling science author, Mary Roach. She will discuss her frank approach to science, the importance of humor, and explore the weird, wonderful world in which we live.

Dubbed “America’s funniest science writer” by the Washington Post, Roach has explored topics from the curious lives of human cadavers, packing to visit space, the afterlife, the alimentary canal, and more. Roach claims to have no hobbies, but enjoys bird-watching, hiking, playing scrabble, and watching late-night Animal Planet.

This event is made possible by Illinois Libraries Present, a statewide collaboration among public libraries offering premier events. ILP is funded in part by a grant awarded by the Illinois State Library, a department of the Office of Secretary of State, using funds provided by the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services, under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA). ILP is committed to inclusion and accessibility. 

Register here for the Zoom webinar.

Join a Library Book Club

We’ve got options – join whichever interests you the most. Cant’ decide? Join multiple!

Book ’em – Mystery Book Club

A mystery book discussion group that meets the third Tuesday of each month at 1:00pm.  Books are provided on a first-come, first-served basis, and can be picked up at the Information Desk on the second floor. Come pick up a copy and start sleuthing today! 

Book ’em Reading List

A Novel Naptime – A Book Club for Parents with Young Children

Do you have young kids and can’t seem to find the time to get away for a fulfilling book group? Come join us for A Novel Naptime, our popular materials book group for parents – where kids preschool age and under are welcome! We will meet the third Wednesday of every month at 10:30am for a discussion. Toys and activities will be available for the kids. Don’t worry, we fully expect there to be crying and interruptions while we meet, and that’s ok! Pick up a copy of the book at the Information Desk.

A Novel Naptime Reading List

Pageturners – Popular, Contemporary Book Club

A contemporary fiction and nonfiction book discussion group that meets the first Tuesday of each month at 1:00pm.  Books are provided on a first-come, first-served basis, and can be picked up at the Information Desk on the second floor.  Or find any copy and join us!  

Pageturners Reading List

Rooting Out Poverty Book Club – Justice, Equity, Diversity & Inclusion Book Club

The Rooting Out Poverty discussion group, in partnership with Project Now, meets the fourth Wednesday of each month at 6:30pm. Book discussions alternate with community forum discussions every other month – read and discuss the book one month and then next month do a deeper dive into the issues addressed in the book at the forum discussion before moving on to a new book and topic the month after that. Book choices will be focused on social justice and equality issues involving housing, economics, education, healthcare and the justice system.  

Rooting Out Poverty Reading List

Inciting Joy: A Conversation with Ross Gay

Online Program, Wednesday, January 11, 2023 from 7:00pm – 8:00pm

Kick off your new year with a conversation about joy with best-selling essayist and award-winning poet Ross Gay. An exploration of the joy we incite when we turn our attention to what we love and what brings us together, Ross will discuss his most recent collection of essays, Inciting Joy, with performance poet Dan “Sully” Sullivan.

Ross Gay is the author of four books of poetry: Against Which; Bringing the Shovel Down; Be Holding, winner of the PEN American Literary Jean Stein Award; and Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, winner of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. His first collection of essays, The Book of Delights, was released in 2019 and was a New York Times bestseller.

This event is made possible by Illinois Libraries Present, a statewide collaboration among public libraries offering premier events. ILP is funded in part by a grant awarded by the Illinois State Library, a department of the Office of Secretary of State, using funds provided by the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services, under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA).

Register for the webinar here.

Happy Dewey Decimal System Day!

(And 170th birthday of Melvil Dewey, the cataloging systems originator!)

Photo by Erol Ahmed on Unsplash

Oh, Dewey Decimal System, how would we find books without you? After nearly a hundred and fifty years of use (and a significant number of expansions and updates) you are still helping us find the right spot to place and find books on our shelves. Yes, even after all this time and the fact that parts of you are still horribly dated and skewed towards a less modern and inclusive world-view, you are still a helpful tool that has assisted librarians and readers for generations.

While many public libraries have gone to a more bookstore like setup for their fiction titles, with different genres getting their own section to better aid browsing, most still organize their non-fiction collections using the familiar system. Familiar not just because many of us were taught the basics of the Dewey Decimal System way-back-when in our elementary school libraries, but also because it is the most popular library classification system in the world. Books are arranged by Dewey number in 135 countries across the globe.

Can you imagine trying to find a book without a call number to search for? I shudder to think of it.

For the library patrons and the curious here is a quick summary of the Dewey subject headings and where to find them on your next visit:

Class 000 – Computer science, Information and General Works
000 Computer science, knowledge and systems
010 Bibliographies
020 Library and information sciences
030 Encyclopedias and books of facts
060 Associations, organizations and museums
070 News media, journalism and publishing
080 Quotations
090 Manuscripts and rare books
Class 100 – Philosophy and Psychology
100 Philosophy and psychology
110 Metaphysics
120 Epistemology
130 Parapsychology and occultism
140 Philosophical schools of thought
150 Psychology
160 Philosophical logic
170 Ethics
180 Ancient, medieval, and Eastern philosophy
190 Modern Western philosophy (19th-century, 20th-century)
Class 200 – Religion
200 Religion
210 Philosophy and theory of religion
210 Philosophy and theory of religion
220 The Bible
230 Christianity
240 Christian practice and observance
250 Christian orders and local church
260 Social and ecclesiastical theology
270 History of Christianity
280 Christian denominations
290 Other religions
Class 300 – Social Sciences
300 Social sciences, sociology and anthropolgy
310 Statistics
320 Political science
330 Economics
340 Law
350 Public administration and military science
360 Social problems and social services
370 Education
380 Commerce, communications and transportation
390 Customs, etiquette and folklore
Class 400 – Language
400 Language
410 Linguistics
420 English and Old English languages
430 German and related languages
440 French and related languages
450 Italian, Romanian and related languages
460 Spanish, Portuguese, Galician
470 Latin and Italic languages
480 Classical and modern Greek languages
490 Other languages
Class 500 – Science
500 Natural sciences and mathematics
510 Mathematics
520 Astronomy
530 Physics
540 Chemistry
550 Earth sciences and geology
560 Fossils and prehistoric life
570 Biology
580 Plants
590 Animals (Zoology)
Class 600 – Technology
600 Technology (Applied sciences)
610 Medicine and health
620 Engineering
630 Agriculture
640 Home and family management
650 Management and public relations
660 Chemical engineering
670 Manufacturing
680 Manufacture for specific uses
690 Construction of buildings
Class 700 – Arts and Recreation
700 The Arts
710 Area planning and landscape architecture
710 Area planning and landscape architecture
720 Architecture
730 Sculpture, ceramics and metalwork
740 Graphic arts and decorative arts
750 Painting
760 Printmaking and prints
770 Photography, computer art, film, video
780 Music
790 Outline of sports, games and entertainment
Class 800 – Literature
800 Literature, rhetoric and criticism
810 American literature in English
820 English and Old English literatures
830 German and related literatures
840 French and related literatures
850 Italian, Romanian and related literatures
860 Spanish, Portuguese, Galician literatures
870 Latin and Italic literatures
880 Classical and modern Greek literatures
890 Other literatures
Class 900 – History and Geography
900 History, geography, and auxiliary disciplines
910 Geography and travel
920 Biography and genealogy
930 History of ancient world (to c. 499)
940 History of Europe
950 History of Asia
960 History of Africa
970 History of North America
980 History of South America
990 History of other areas

Genre Friday – True Crime

True Crime is as popular than ever, perhaps even more so…

Photo by Maxim Hopman on Unsplash

True Crime is a genre of non-fiction. It shows up in everything from podcasts to movies to magazines and, of course, books. The simplest definition of the genre is that it is about a real-life crime, its perpetrator(s) and its victim(s). Beyond that it could theoretically be about anything but you will find certain commonalities between most True Crime stories.

Not surprisingly, the outrageous, the gruesome and the horrible get the most pages written about them. There are not a lot of books out there about some miscreants adventures in jaywalking or petty vandalism. Things like murder and kidnapping, on the other hand, make up a disproportionately large portion of books relative to the number of these crimes that are actually committed. Scaring people gets their attention. This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who has ever tuned in to a news network or even watched a news program – both of which could be argued to be extensions of the True Crime genre at this point. True Crime can be about a single event or a series of them but the crimes will always be linked. These gruesome crimes are normally examined in minute detail, starting from before the crime is committed and sometimes going until after the culprit has been caught and tried for their crimes. And those minute details need to be true! True Crime readers are aware that what they are reading about actually happened and they expect the facts to be verified and for the timelines and dates to line up. Factual does not mean that the genre is not about entertainment, however, as one of the similarities shared by many of the most popular True Crime books is a talented author who manages to lay out said facts and timelines in a way that will keep the suspense high and the reader enthralled.

So, why are we so into it? Especially now, when it feels like people would want to be focusing on the positive aspects of life and society so we don’t… you know… fall into a deep well of despair from which we are unlikely to ever escape.

This is the subject of a lot of discussion online (and some actual psychological studies), and it turns out there are several reasons why people might be interested. It could be because some us kind of like to be freaked out, at least we do when we are relatively sure that we are actually in no danger. It’s a little bit of adrenaline and excitement without the risk. It could be out of a sense of relief. Knowing that this horrible thing happened but also knowing that it is in the past and didn’t involve the reader can feel like they dodged a bullet. It could be that there is an engrained evolutionary component in wanting to know the details that led up to a horrible situation – the idea being the forewarned is forearmed. Or it could be any number or combination of other reasons.

Ultimately, why you might be interested in True Crime doesn’t matter so much to us. We just love that you are – reading is good. If you are new to the genre or looking for your next read, here is a list of some of the best:

Genre Friday – Sagas

Sagas started out a Norse thing, which explains all the sailing around and Vikings in the earliest examples.

Sagas have been around for a while. Originally an oral tradition (in fact, the word saga comes from an Old Norse word meaning “something spoken”) they started being written down 800 or 900 years ago. Generally speaking they were accounts of major historical (or legendary) events, the lives of important figures or family histories. Some of the most famous and well known examples are the family sagas of the Icelanders (the ones that helped inspire J.R.R. Tolkien to create Middle-Earth and all the stories that take place there). The thing they pretty much all had in common is that they were complex stories dealing with dramatic or heroic events that spanned a significant period of time – years to generations.

If anywhere says “Time passing in a dramatic fashion here,” it’s Iceland. Photo by Cassie Boca on Unsplash

The historical sagas are still around – for example, you can read all the Icleandic sagas online here – but the term has also been coopted by modern literature as a genre that includes stories that are complex, deal with dramatic or heroic subject matter and cover a long period of time. Go figure.

Sagas can be fiction or non-fiction and can overlap with several other genres; memoirs, historical fiction or non-fiction, magical realism, literary fiction, science fiction, and so on. Some sagas are not just a single book – many are released as a series, with each book dealing with a new generation or event. They all count as sagas as long as they fit the general criteria mentioned above. Regardless of overlapping genre, family sagas are still the most common type of saga, with stories often covering the doings of generations of a family (or group of interconnected families) but historical events and legendary figures pop up too.

For those feeling forvitinn, here is a list to get you started.

I, For One, Welcome Our New Computer Overlords

Twenty-four years ago today, on February 10, 1996, a computer called Deep Blue first beat a human chess master, Garry Kasparov, in a game of chess. Kasparov did go on to win the six-game match at least, but then Deep Blue won the rematch the next year (narrowly, and Kasparov claimed that Deep Blue’s team cheated, but still…). Computers have only gotten smarter since then – in fact, they are learning all the time!

Some of them at least. My desk computer certainly doesn’t seem any smarter today than it was yesterday. It may possibly be dumber in fact… but that’s neither here nor there.

The revolution will be live streamed!

Advancements in programming and algorithms means that (some) computers are smarter than ever. Machine learning, a large part of artificial intelligence, even means that they can “learn” and improve through experience. It’s the future, and it is happening all around us. It’s all very exciting… and maybe even a little scary for some.

For those that want to delve further into the possibilities, here is a list of books about computers and robots that can think for themselves, for better or worse.

FICTION

NON-FICTION

Weather on your mind?

Yesterday the most famous weather rodent in the world, Punxsutawney Phil, let us know to expect 6 more weeks of winter. Probably a safe bet with the cycle of snow and freezing rain we seem to be stuck in, not to mention the coming cold snap. Either way it has got me thinking about the weather (and Bill Murray, but that’s a different post).

If you are too, here are some books about Weather, to educate, entertain and maybe make you feel a little better, because it could always be worse.

National Non-Fiction Day

Prefer essays to short stories, memoirs to dramas, studies in history to novels? Then today is for you!

The first Thursday in November is National Non-Fiction Day.

There are as many different types of non-fiction as there are topics to study, discuss or reflect upon, so whether you read nothing but non-fiction or you just want to try something different here is a list of some popular titles for you to try. There’s something for everyone!