Two stunning books that I've read and loved of late and have been meaning to mention here: Tallgrass by Sandra Dallas and Mudbound by Hillary Jordan.

Both are tender and heartbreaking all at once.

Jordan was the 2006 winner of Barbara Kingsolver’s Bellwether Prize for Fiction in Support of a Literature of Social Change.





Just like Riverside's own Gayle Brandeis, who won the 2002 Bellwether Prize for her gorgeous novel, The Book of Dead Birds.









I've been thinking for some time about Cormac McCarthy's No Country For Old Men. What are we to make of this story?

For weeks I've been engaged in a number of conversations with friends and colleagues about the book and the film. There were also those who told me they refused to see the film because of the terrible violence, and I can't say that I blame them.

I share my father's opinion that the book/film suggests that greedy impulses will set in motion a violent chain of events that conventional systems cannot control. Anton Chigurh, dressed entirely in black, is a grim reaper of sorts -- death personified.

Librarians Have Good Taste

Jean Preston, according to all of the newspaper accounts, was a modest woman. They say she travelled by bus, bought her clothes from catalogs, and ate frozen dinners. But this librarian seems to also have known a thing or two about the finer things of life. Here's what they found in her house after she passed away:

Two panels of the San Marcos altarpiece by none other than Fra Angelico. The two panels, one of which you see to the left, sold at auction for approximately $3.5 million. Her dad bought them back in the sixties when she commented on how much she liked them. Original purchase price? Less than $500.

But just like those infomercial ads, "Wait, there's more."

She also had a painting by Dante Gabriel Rossetti and another by Edward Burne-Jones. Estimated worth of the pair: $2 million.

Don't worry though, as a librarian, she also valued books. She had a rare edition of Chaucer's works, worth about $150,000.

All told, she had approximately $8 million worth of valuables in her home. Not bad for a retired librarian living on a pension.

Today, I want to direct your attention to our very own teen librarian Alicia Doktor-Dorst's recently published editorial in The Press Enterprise entitled, Beyond the Books: Modern libraries woo teen patrons with games, technology, 'Third Space' and more.

Good job, Alicia!