Where's the Card Catalog?

The easy punchline here would involve the art of using the card catalog (har, har), but who else is looking at this and thinking "Herrick might need something completely different for their Christmas decorations this year"?

According to American Libraries Magazine, the sculpture Open Book in Highland Park, IL is over 12 feet and made of (and this is the part that makes me want to whimper a little) 17,000 used library catalog cards.

And here I thought our creativity with the old literary criticism volumes was impressive...

Attention Book Groups

Stopping was never part of the plan  ...  She was a successful ad sales rep in Manhattan.  He was a homeless, eleven-year-old panhandler on the street.  He asked for spare change; she kept walking.  But then something stopped her in her tracks, and she went back.  And she continued to go back, again and again.  They met up nearly every week for years and built an unexpected, life-changing friendship that has today spanned almost three decades.

Available as a Book Group to Go Bag.

National Book Awards Announcement

The finalists for the National Book Award were announced this morning on Morning Joe.
Although there were no real surprises, here's one of those kickers that I love: two of the fiction finalists (Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk and The Yellow Birds) are both debut novels.  How cool would that be?  To actually and truly write the Great American Novel the first time you publish a book?

Anywho, this is a lengthy reading list, so get busy--the winners will be announced on November 14th!

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Ghostly Michigan

Join us on Tuesday, October 16 at 7 pm for Ghostly Michigan, presented by paranormal team Amberrose Hammond and Tom Maat.  They will talk about their favorite haunts, legends and creepy creatures lurking around Michigan.  The program will be on the lower level of the library in the Hazel 

Hayes auditorium.

Attention Book Groups

Do you have Dutch Ancestry?  If so, you may enjoy the nonfiction book "The Island at the Center of the World: the epic story of Dutch Manhattan and the forgotten colony that shaped America."  It tells of New York as a Dutch Colony in the 1600s, information which was largely forgotten when New York (once called New Amsterdam) was taken over by the British in 1664.  Author Russell Shorto tells us about the early leaders of the colony, a progressive young lawyer named Adriaen Van der donck and the authoritarian governor of the Dutch Colony, Peter Stuyvesant.

Available as a Book Group to Go bag.

Tour of Pilgrim Home Cemetery

Join us for a tour of Pilgrim Home Cemetery on Tuesday, October 23 at 6 p.m.  We will meet in the Holland Municipal Stadium parking lot and Randall Vande Water will lead us on our tour through the cemetery.  He will speak about the history of the cemetery and tell stories of some of Holland's earliest residents, including pioneers and Civil War veterans.  The tour is free and open to the public.  In the event of rain, the tour will be the following week, October 30 at 6 p.m.    

Newly Notable -- The Casual Vacancy

There's been plenty of buzz and excitement about J.K. Rowling's new book, The Casual Vacancy, but given the full-on publisher's embargo, reviews were unavailable until the book was actually released last week.
Book critics across the board are having a fairly unified reaction: it's not Harry Potter.  Some reviews are slightly kinder than others, but here's a smattering:
From The New York Times: "The reader can only hope [Rowling] doesn't try to flesh out the Muggle world of Pagford, but instead moves on to something more compelling and deeply felt in the future."
The Entertainment Weekly review was more overt: "When the novel finally arrives at its predictable and heavy-handed ending, what started as a lively comedy of manners has turned into a overwrought slog."
But Guardian out of the UK had a slightly gentler spin: "[it's] no masterpiece, but it's not bad at all: intelligent, workmanlike, and often funny.  I could imagine it doing well without any association to Rowling...it lacks the Harry Potter books' warmth and charm....but the worst you could say about it, really, is that it doesn't deserve the media frenzy surrounding it."
So there it is: it's not HP.  But I'm curious about our local readers.  Have you read it?  What are your thoughts?