Where the Fur Flies

Take some of the "chill" out of your winter with birdwatching. The varieties and colors are breathtaking against the virgin white snow. Below is a start on how to attract these birds and the care needed to keep them coming back again and again.

Color for Your Winter Yard & Garden, with Flowers, Berries, Birds, and Trees by Helen Van Pelt Wilson. This book will help you plant the correct plants to bring color to a winter garden and attract birds.

Dr. Noble Proctor's Garden Birds: How to Attract Birds To Your Garden is a great choice to review, including a directory of one hundred types of birds. Browse through to see what works best in your area.

The next book, Color For Your Winter Yard & Garden, With Flowers, Berries, Birds, and Trees by Helen Van Pelt Wilson will explain in detail what colorful scrubs, wind barriers, flower seeds, etc. are needed to attract birds.

The Audubon North American Birdfeeder Guide by Robert Burton is another excellent book to start you quest to attracting birds all year long.

Listen Up!

Got the winter blues?! If you are bored, restless, or irritable you may be suffering from cabin fever. How about listening to a good book? When the libraries latest audio books on compact discs arrive, they are now shelved separately at the beginning of the collection of audio books. So, if you want to listen to something brand new on audio this is where you'll find it.

Some new titles for January are:

Award winning author Salman Rushdie's new novel on compact disc is The Enchantress of Florence. This extraordinary story occurs in the 16th century at the imperial capital of the Mughal Empire. Mogor dell'Amore, a European traveler, arrives at the court of Emperor Akbar with a facinating tale about faraway Florence, a beautiful enchantress, and the infamous Niccolo Machiavelli. This audio book is narrated by Firdous Bamji who has appeared in several plays on Broadway and guest starred on the televison series Law & Order.

Do you like mysteries? How about listening to Simon Brett's The Stabbing In The Stables, a Fethering Mystery. Jude and Carole Seddon are at it again. This time they stumble upon the body of ex-equestrian Walter Fleet at Long Bamber Stables. Who would want to put Fleet, a womanizing horseman, out to pasture? Soon the Seddons find themselves in the middle of a West Sussex police investigation for a "horse ripper". This book on compact disc is read by Ralph Cosham, a former British journalist whose narrations have been named "Audio Best of the Year" by Publishers Weekly.

Whether young enough to look "hot" or mature enough to suffer from "hot flashes," every woman has given thought to preserving her appearance. In her latest book, American Thighs: the Sweet Potato Queen's Guide to Preserving Your Assets, Jill Conner Browne looks at a woman's maturation process with hilarious stories every woman can relate to, from bad haircuts, to verbal faux pas. No matter what skin you're in, Browne urges to make it last a lifetime. Audio book read by the author.

In the News

After an historic election, a new president has been sworn into office. President Obama has had a fascinating life, but so have many of our past presidents. We have a great selection of presidential biographies at the Riverhead Free Library. Here are a few.

An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963 by Robert Dallek, a Boston University professor and presidential biographer, chronicles the life of one of America's most captivating presidents. This highly praised biography takes a balanced look at the private and public life of Kennedy and presents never before released information from the family archives.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Dorris Goodwin Kearns has been referred to lately for her book Team of Rivals : The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, which discusses President Lincoln's unique cabinet choices that lead up to his presidency. Kearns delves into the reasoning and motivations behind Lincoln's political maneuvers, and there have been apt comparisons to Barack Obama's own cabinet selections.

Author David McCullough, well known for his engaging and dynamic biographies, has written a Pulitzer Prize winner with Truman. This in-depth page turner follows our thirty-third President, Harry S. Truman, from his humble beginnings, his World War I heroics, his early years in politics, to his historic re-election campaign.

Book Discussion and Author Event

This Common Ground: Seasons on an Organic Farm
by Scott Chaskey
Saturday, January 17
10:30 a.m. to noon
Main floor meeting room (PLEASE NOTE)

This promises to be a lively discussion with Long Island author Scott Chaskey hosting the event. The head farmer at Peconic Land Trust's Quail Hill Farm, located on the South Fork, Scott combines his love for books, poetry, and farming into This Common Ground. Please let the Reference Desk know if you plan to attend this event and have not already signed up. Light refreshments will be served.

The discussion will be followed by a reception at "The Green Spot" from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. the same day. This new green wall to the right of the library's entryway is the location for a permanent display featuring free information about local "green" activities. Riverhead cardholders will also have an opportunity to sign up for the library's adult winter reading club, Riverhead Reads: The Green Spot, for a chance to win prizes from local merchants. Join us for light refreshments. No sign up is needed.

Mr. Hollywood Speaks

Laugh in the new year with these great comedy recommendations available on DVD!

First, we have Son of Rambow, an off-beat British comedy in which two school-boy buddies set out to make their own epic version of 'Rambo: First Blood'. Armed with a videocamera and their overactive immagination, pretty soon their homemade movie takes on a life of its own.

Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman star in The Savages, a black comedy about two distint siblings who come back into each others' lives to care for their ailing father. This award-winning movie comes highly praised and with plenty of levity.

You can never go wrong with a Disney Pixar movie, so check out Ratatouille, which follows the hilarious adventures of Remy, the rat with a dream to be a chef. Fleeing the French countryside, Remy ends up in a Pariasan restaurant with a chance to fufill his dream along with a little help from a bumbling low level worker.

And don't forget to check out our comedy book and movie selection on display now!

Local History Book Stop

Chartered in 1834, the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) is the oldest American railway still operating under its original name. There are a number of pictorial histories of the LIRR, but Long Island Rail Road by Stan Fischler combines classic and modern photos with a sweeping written history of this legendary line.

The Long Island Rail Road: A Comprehensive History by Vincent F. Seyfried is a well-researched book highlighting the age of expansion of the railroad from 1863 to 1880. In addition, it contains some rare archival photographs.

For pictorial works, try Long Island Rail Road by Fred Kramer. This series of photographs captures the steam-to-diesel transition east of Jamaica. From Arcadia Publishing comes Revisiting the Long Island Rail Road 1925-1975 by David Keller and Steven Lynch and Long Island Rail Road Stations by David D. Morrison and Valerie Pakaluk. Both books present a collection of photos with detailed captions.

Authors Ron Ziel and George H. Foster researched the LIRR firsthand, walking the right-of-ways and riding the trains, from switch engines to parlor cars. For their book Steel Rails to the Sunrise: The Long Island Railroad, they searched every town on the railroad lines. With the help of active and retired railroaders, they unearthed rare photographs and fascinating anecdotes that are a vital part of the history and romance of this unique railroad.

Blue Ribbon Book Stop

Snow might be in the forecast, so to keep your cabin fever in check try checking-out one of these highly recommended new mystery novels. These are not your traditional mystery series novels though and they will keep you guessing till the very end.

Winner of the 2008 Edgar Award for mystery novels, Down River by John Hart tells the story of Adam Chase, newly acquitted from a New York City murder trial and heading home to North Carolina. But home only brings more trouble, as the people around him start to die Adam once again finds himself the prime suspect.

Touted by the New York Times as one of the top crime novels of 2008, The Genius by Jesse Kellerman is an enthralling murder mystery set in the art world. Art gallery owner Ethan Muller exhibits a collection of drawings that unknowingly contain the portraits of four children from a decades old murder case. This sets off a dramatic series of events that leads Ethan and a detective on the hunt for the killer.

Another Edgar Mystery Award, this time for 2007, Jason Goodwin's The Janissary Tree takes a historical fiction approach to the murder mystery novel. Set in the Ottoman Empire in 1836, a eunuch intelligence agent is searching for the culprit of a string of political murders that threatens to topple the sultan's delicate balance of power.

If you breeze through these recommendations we have plenty of more books in our mystery section that will keep you going through the winter.