Mary Buck

Help the Earth Every Day

How can you help the Earth?  There are lots of ways to get involved in conservation whether you're a kid, teen, or adult. Check out the local activities, Web sites and library materials listed below for some great ideas.

Join a Club
The Virginia Cooperative Extension Agency offers 4-H clubs. If you are between the ages of 5 and 18, you can learn about plant and soil sciences, the environment and natural resources as well as animal sciences from great teachers. There are 4-H clubs in Spotsylvania, Stafford, and Westmoreland counties. These have hands-on activities that strongly encourage leadership development. 4-H projects are fun and can be competitive.

Become a Friend of the River
Not of a mind to face the crowds at the National Mall celebration? Consider volunteering with the Friends of the Rappahannock.  From planting trees to designing and painting rain barrels, they have many volunteer opportunities.

Fun Things to Do to Celebrate Earth Day:

Discover Earth: February 26 - April 24 at England Run Branch
Visit the England Run Branch and explore the Discover Earth: A Century of Change exhibit.  The Central Rappahannock Regional Library system is one of only ten libraries in the country to successfully apply for this grant-funded, museum-quality science exhibit.  It features interactive, multimedia displays allowing visitors to interact with digital information in a dynamic way and encouraging new perspectives on our planet while reinforcing STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) concepts.  

If you like Interview with a Vampire by Anne Rice

Interview with a Vampire by Anne Rice

This readalike is in response to a patron's book-match request. If you would like personalized reading recommendations, fill out the book-match form and a librarian will email suggested titles to you. Available for adults, teens, and kids.  You can browse the book matches here.

Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice: Here are the confessions of a vampire. Hypnotic, shocking, and chillingly erotic, this is a novel of mesmerizing beauty and astonishing force-a story of danger and flight, of love and loss, of suspense and resolution, and of the extraordinary power of the senses.

If you enjoyed Interview with the Vampire you might also like these books:

American Gods by Neil Gaiman
From the Publisher: "Shadow dreamed of nothing but leaving prison and starting a new life. But the day before his release, his wife and best friend are killed in an accident. On the plane home to the funeral, he meets Mr. Wednesday-a beguiling stranger who seems to know everything about him. A trickster and rogue, Mr. Wednesday offers Shadow a job as
his bodyguard. With nowhere left to go, Shadow accepts, and soon learns that his role in Mr. Wednesday's schemes will be far more dangerous and dark than he could have ever imagined. For beneath the placid surface of everyday life a war is being fought-and the prize is the very soul of America."

Indigo by Graham Joyce
Annotation from Amazon.com: "It is a color the human eye cannot truly see, a slice of the spectrum imbued with the promise of invisibility. But for Jack Chambers, the son of a scientist renowned as both a genius and a madman, it will lead to places of unknown treachery. As executor of his estranged-father's will, Jack is appointed two ominous tasks: publish Timothy Chambers' bizarre manuscript Invisibility: A Manual of Light, and track down an unknown woman who stands to inherit the substantial estate. Jack's mission leads him to reunite with his half-sister, Louise, now grown into a stunning woman. Bound by a tense attraction, Jack and Louise head to Rome, where a cultlike group pursues the intoxicating secrets of the elusive indigo -- and where Jack perceives its horrid danger only when it's too late."

If You Like Saturday by Ian McEwan

Saturday

This readalike is in response to a patron's book-match request. If you would like personalized reading recommendations, fill out the book-match form and a librarian will email suggested titles to you. Available for adults, teens, and kids.  You can browse the book matches here.

Saturday by Ian McEwan "follows an ordinary man through a Saturday whose high promise gradually turns nightmarish. Henry Perowne-a neurosurgeon, urbane, privileged, deeply in love with his wife and grown-up children-plans to play a game of squash, visit his elderly mother, and cook dinner for his family. But after a minor traffic accident leads to an unsettling confrontation, Perowne must set aside his plans and summon a strength greater than he knew he had in order to preserve the life that is dear to him."

If you liked Saturday, here are several titles you may also enjoy:

Agapé Agape by William Gaddis
"The late William Gaddis wrote four novels during his lifetime, immense and complex books that helped inaugurate a new movement in American letters. Now comes his final work of fiction, a subtle, concentrated culmination of his art and ideas. For more than fifty years Gaddis collected notes for a book about the mechanization of the arts, told via a social history of the player piano in America. In the years before his death in 1998, he distilled the whole mass into a fiction, a dramatic monologue by an elderly man with a terminal illness. This "man in the bed" lies dying, thinking anxiously about the book he still plans to write, grumbling about the deterioration of civilization and trying to explain his obsession to the world before he passes away or goes mad.
Agape- Agape continues Gaddis's career-long reflection via the form of the novel on those aspects of the corporate technological culture that are uniquely destructive of the arts. It is a stunning achievement from one of the indisputable masters of postwar American fiction."-catalog summary

The Amber Photograph by Penelope Stokes
Diedre McAlister's mother is dying. But before she lets go of this life, she givers her daughter an old photograph and these parting words: "Find yourself. Find your truth. Just don't expect it to be what you thought it would be."And Now Diedre's search begins-a quest to find the only person who can provide the missing pieces, the truth. But that search will cost Diedre her naive innocence and expose her family's unknown dark side. It will shake up Diedre's world, threaten lives, bring out the shadow of her past, challenge her faith-and quite possibly save her life.
 

If you like "The Girl With No Shadow" by Joanne Harris...

Hello! I haven't had a chance to read "The Lollipop Shoes" (published as "The Girl With No Shadow" in the U.S.) by Joanne
Harris, but I enjoyed "Chocolat". Here are some titles that pick up on
various elements of Harris's work that you may also enjoy:


"The Book Thief" by Markus Zusak

"Trying to make sense of the horrors of World War II, Death relates the
story of Liesel--a young German girl whose book-stealing and

If you like "The Invisible Circus" by Jennifer Egan...

If you liked "The Invisible Circus" by Jennifer Egan, you may enjoy
these novels for their 1960's and 1970's settings:



"The Jane Austen Book Club" by Karen Joy Fowler

A funny and touching book about 5 women and 1 man who meet to discuss
Jane Austen's books. Over the course of six months, each member
reminisces about events from his or her life.



"Crazy in Alabama" by Mark Childress

If you like a good, broad range of fiction...

Hello! Since you read a wide variety of authors - Haruki Murakami,
Gail Tsukiyama, Amy Tan, Alexander McCall Smith, John Irving, and Anne Tyler - I have recommended a broad range of authors and titles for your enjoyment:

"Kangaroo Notebook" by Kobo Abe

"In the last novel written before his death in 1993, one of Japan's most
distinguished novelists proffered a surreal vision of Japanese society
that manages to be simultaneously fearful and jarringly funny. The

If you like romances amid a wartime setting...

I'm not sure if you only like books set during the U.S.
Civil War or books set against the backdrop of any war. So, I have come
up with the following suggestions based on my assumptions:

"A Tale of Two Cities" by Charles Dickens.
summary from the Publisher: "When the starving French masses rise in
hate to overthrow a corrupt and decadent government, both the guilty and
innocent become victims of their frenzied anger. Soon nothing stands in
the way of the chilling figure they enlist for their cause-La

If you like Perelandra by C.S. Lewis ...

If you liked  “Perelandra," you might find something to enjoy in these titles.

“The Sparrow” by Mary Doria Russell
“Emilio Sandoz, a brilliant Jesuit priest, seems like the perfect leader for the first expedition to an extraterrestrial culture. However, when Sandoz returns to Earth 20 years later as the mission's sole survivor, he is accused of unspeakable violence and depravity. Why? An extraordinary fiction debut, by paleoanthropologist Mary Doria Russell.”--Copyright © Libri GmbH.

If You Like Eragon by Christopher Paolini ...

Here are suggestions for books that pick up on the sword and sorcery, quest, and dragon aspects of "Eragon": 

If You Like Fantasy ...

 Posted - 01/24/2005 : 09:32:12 AM

These fantasy titles are NOT in the McCaffrey, Bradley, or Lowry
vein and will, hopefully, satisfy your reading appetite!

"Little, Big" by John Crowley

One of my all-time favorite books - big, romantic; with plotlines
following many characters: