September-October DVD Spotlight: Horror Movies

It's only September, and while it may still feel like summer outside, it's already Halloween in the heart of every scary movie fan.  So we're taking two full months to spotlight some of the many horror films in our DVD collection.  If you're in the mood for chills and thrills, Reeves Memorial Library has got you covered.  We've got horror movies about all manner of things that go bump in the night, from vampires and zombies to mutant animals and murderous aliens.  And let's not forget the scariest monster of all, humankind.

Featured titles include:

Audition (1999)

This cringe-inducing Japanese film, surely one of the most disturbing movies ever made, is both an extremely unsettling piece of revenge horror and a surprisingly affecting examination of loneliness.

The Exorcist (1973)

This horror classic, about a possessed teenage girl, is considered by many to be the scariest movie ever made.

Get Out (2017)
Jordan Peele's acclaimed hit, about a young African-American man's nightmarish weekend visit to his white girlfriend's parents' house, is the perfect combination of slowly-escalating unease, disturbing horror, and brilliant social commentary.

Nosferatu (1922)

This silent, expressionistic adaptation of the Dracula story features some of the most haunting imagery in all of cinema.

Shaun of the Dead (2004)

With equal parts horror and humor, this wildly entertaining film tells the story of a slacker who tries to win back his ex-girlfriend amid the chaos of a zombie apocalypse.

The Thing (1982)
Tension and paranoia abound in John Carpenter's gory horror classic, about an Antarctic research station that comes under attack by a shapeshifting alien.

Stop by the library and check one out today ... if you dare.

Friday Reads: The Giver of Stars

 Librarianship hasn't always meant sitting in front of a screen and navigating databases. Today, Public Services Librarian Kelly Clever tells us about The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes, in which librarians deliver reading materials on horseback.

Kelly Clever with The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes

This book was recommended to me by a friend who knows that I grew up in the mountains and had horses. For some reason she said that the based-on-real-history novel about the "pack horse librarians" of Appalachia made her think of me...

Alice, a bored and frustrated young Englishwoman, falls fast and hard for a hunky traveling American from Kentucky. The two young people quickly marry and head back to the States for what Alice expects will be a glamorous socialite life in Lexington. 

As it turns out, however, Alice is headed for a small mining town and marriage proves to be anything but what she expected. Desperate to get out of the house, she volunteers to ride for the new pack horse library and help provide the isolated cabins in the mountains with reading material. It's hard and sometimes dangerous work, but Alice soon finds that the elements and the distrustful mountain folk are the least of her problems.

I like to think that I would have made a good pack horse librarian if I had lived in eastern Kentucky back in the 1930s. My dear departed pony, Buddy, would have been deeply annoyed by the mileage and the weight of the saddlebags, but I expect we would have done okay. 

Buddy and me, circa 2007

Friday Reads: The City of Mirrors

How are you enjoying your apocalypse? Cataloging & Acquisitions Librarian Adam Pellman found this particular Friday Reads, The City of Mirrors by Justin Cronin, a little too on the nose for our current situation. 

The City of Mirrors is the final book in a trilogy about a vampire plague that has overrun North America (and probably the rest of the world, too). In the first book of the trilogy, an American scientist on an expedition in the jungles of Central America was bitten by a particularly nasty species of bat, leading to an infection that transformed him into a bloodthirsty vampire with superhuman strength. Government scientists then decided to use the vampire to start an experiment with human subjects that, unsurprisingly, went awry, resulting in the death or infection of almost everyone on the continent. This third book is set about a century later, as the descendants of those first survivors have gathered in isolated colonies in a fight against any remaining infected humans, which they call "virals."

I like the trilogy, but this turned out to be an unwise choice of novels to read during a pandemic. It's an inadvertently timely read. In one passage, an old newspaper article from the time of the initial outbreak sounds like it could be from 2020: "The Easter Virus ... can travel great distances attached to dust motes or respiratory droplets, causing many health officials to liken it to the Spanish influenza pandemic of 1918, which killed as many as 50 million people worldwide. Travel bans have done little to slow its spread, as have attempts by officials in many cities to prevent people from congregating in public places." So much for escapism!

End of an Era

It's official: Reeves Memorial Library has deaccessed the remaining microfilm holdings from the collection. Whereas we at one time had many journals available on microfilm or fiche the last to disappear is our collection of The New York Times. Luckily a portion of the collection was sent to another academic library to complete their holdings. Godspeed to another remnant of libraries as we once knew them.

                   

Friday Reads: Jedi Apprentice: The Hidden Past

And now, for something different, a 20-year-old pop-culture children's book, shared by Public Services Librarian Kelly Clever.

I'm guessing I'm not the only one who needs a light, fun distraction these days. I've been a big Star Wars fan since I first saw the original trilogy and The Phantom Menace on borrowed VHS tapes back in 2000. Back then, my knowledge of the "Expanded Universe" (Star Wars lore beyond the movies) came from fanfiction.net rather than from the books and comics that were churned out to cash in on the cultural craze. I was five or six years too old to be the intended audience for the Jedi Apprentice series, but now that the world is on fire around our ears, who couldn't use a little Jedi zen? Since my public library has reopened, I'm able to get my hands on these out-of-print gems. 

At the beginning of the series, Obi-Wan Kenobi is about to turn 13. Since no one has chosen him to be their apprentice, he'll be kicked out of the Jedi Order and sent to work in the Agricultural Corps instead of fulfilling his dream of becoming a Jedi Knight. His last hopes are pinned on impressing Qui-Gon Jinn... who unfortunately had a very bad experience with his last apprentice and has sworn he's not going to take on another one. Spoiler alert: he eventually does, but it takes a lot of convincing. This series follows the adventures of Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan as master and apprentice. 

These are middle-grade readers, and I was a little hesitant because I am not a big fan of YA, but I am finding that it's the content matter in YA that I don't enjoy rather than the reading level or the age of the protagonist. The Hidden Past is the third book in the series (there are 20 total). All but the first book are written by Jude Watson. They're fast, fun reads with plenty of adventure and the assurance that the good guys will always win, but they also go deeper into themes of courage, compassion, perseverance, loyalty, patience, sacrifice, and hope. There are also Yoda wisdom-nuggets sprinkled liberally throughout. I consider easy-to-digest wisdom a big plus in 2020. 

Do note that this series is no longer "canon" and is instead considered part of the "Legends" universe.

Friday Reads: The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945

Happy Friday! Today, Adam Pellman tells us about his new read, Rick Atkinson's The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945.

Adam Pellman is reading The Guns at Last Light: 

The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945 by Rick Atkinson

This book is the third volume in journalist and historian Rick Atkinson's "Liberation Trilogy," a sweeping account of the Allied effort to liberate Europe during World War II. The first book in the trilogy chronicled the war in North Africa, and the second detailed the invasions of Sicily and Italy. This third volume begins with the Normandy invasion in June of 1944, and I timed my reading so that I would start the book around the anniversary of the invasion.

Atkinson does an incredible job of bringing the events and personalities of the war to life, drawing heavily from firsthand accounts, diaries, and personal correspondence, along with a wealth of other primary source materials. The amount of research that went into this trilogy is staggering (this volume alone includes 200 pages of bibliographical references), and the details Atkinson includes make for a very engaging and eye-opening read. For example, by the time of the invasion, there were over 1.5 million American GIs in Britain, a figure that was higher than the population of many U.S. states at the time. So many GIs impregnated British women that road signs cautioned, "To all GIs: please drive carefully, that child may be yours." It's colorful details like these that really make history come alive.

Friday Reads: The Winds of Khalakovo

Some people are getting a lot of reading done in quarantine; others, not so much. Public Services Librarian Kelly Clever is slowly chipping away at The Winds of Khalakovo by Bradley Beaulieu.

Kelly Clever is reading The Winds of Khalakovo by Bradley Beaulieu

Years ago, when I got my first Nook e-reader, I snatched up free ebooks every time I saw one that sounded sort of interesting. The Winds of Khalakovo was one of the first ones that I gleefully added to my virtual library. About ten years later, I'm finally getting around to reading it.

I remember being intrigued by the vague description of the book as the beginning of an epic-scale fantasy. That's about all I knew about it until a few weeks ago. Now I know that the names are sort-of Russian; that the protagonist seems to be a prince named Nikandr who has some mysterious "wasting disease," which he is keeping a secret from the woman he is about to marry for political reasons; and travel and commerce seems to take place via some sort of "windships," which I'm still struggling to visualize. All is not well in the land of Khalakovo-- there are racial, socio-economic, and political tensions, and an ongoing famine is threatening to get even worse. Nikandr seems to have his work cut out for him if he wants to fix this mess. In the tradition of most of the Russian literature I've read, however, so far he seems resigned to dying a grim death and hopes only to accomplish something not-totally-futile between now and then. We'll see.

Getting oriented to a new fantasy world always takes some time, and I am enjoying the overall tone and atmosphere of the book, so I intend to keep at it.