Here we are at the end of an eventful year and decade. Many media outlets, bloggers, etc have compiled best-of and notable-events-of lists. A few of my favorites are below:

Time has a Best Websites list, and note the other Best and Worst lists..another interesting one is the Best Inventions (and worst) list.

Then there’s WXPN’s albums of the year playback - updates here!

Popular Science has a number of Best of lists for innovations of the year.. includes gadgets and “Green Tech.”

Click your way through the photos on Stylelist for a fun review of the 2009 fashion. Then go through the decade’s Best and Worst fashions.  Some of the Worst Fashion list is worth the visit alone.

National Geographic has a list of 23 fabulous photos of 2009 that can be set as wallpaper on your PC… hard to pick just one!

But, the absolute Best of 2009, in the LG’s opinion, is this Canadian round-up of You Tube videos from 2009.  It includes the immortal “United Breaks Guitars.”

To be exact – DVDs of TV shows, both domestic and BBC now available at WCPL!

First – Life on Mars. A great sci-fi-ish cop show from the BBC. DCI Sam Tyler is hit by a car, is in a coma, and finds himself transported to Manchester police HQ in 1973. Great music, excellent writing (Gene Hunt has some of the best lines…). Reserve Season 1 and 2 at the library!

Second – Fringe. A new US sci-fi FBI series that stars John Noble as slightly mad-scientist Walter Bishop. A bit on the gory side, it features fun monsters and a creepy bald guy with no eye-brows. Not to mention an alternate reality….

Third, try out Murphy’s Law, also from BBC. This stars James Nebitt as under cover cop Tommy Murphy, who really gets some tough assignments. The undertakers running diamonds for drugs was fun.. not to mention the well-meaning Irish priest friend of Tommy Murphy.

All these check out for one week for $3.00 rental. Enjoy!

So, the LG, who is a self-confessed foodie and wanna-be gourmande, has trolled some sites to find best cookbooks and food books of 2009. In no particular order, here they are.

First – www.epicurious.com, a great site for looking up recipes, how-to, etc. Their best-cookbooks-of list includes Lidia Bastanich’s new book and Tal Ronnen’s The Conscious Cook.

Over at www.seriouseats.com they have 10 cookbooks to recommend, including The Pioneer Woman Cooks and Eugenia Bone’s Well Preserved.

NPR has a fine list of 10 best, many of them focused on baking: Rose’s Heavenly Cakes, The Craft of Baking, and Savory Baking.

And, then there’s the NYTimes… they gathered a list of how-to cooking videos that are worth taking a look at. The Times has 2 lists of great cookbooks to peruse: Cooking and 25 More Cookbooks.

And, finally, the LG’s own, personal little list of The Best (being cookbooks she bought for herself this year):

• Goat Cheese – there are some superb appetizer recipes in here!
  
• Pure Simple Cooking

the recipe for roasted chicken,
potatoes, and red onions with
balsamic vinegar is to die for!

And – last of all, do yourself a favor and watch Julie & Julia. It’s one to make you smile, and Meryl Streep is nothing short of brilliant. If that sparks an interest in the grande dame of French cooking, DVD collections of her TV program The French Chef are also available.

Bon appetit.

… Disney-Pixar’s Up do yourself a favor and watch it just as soon as it’s available on DVD – release date is November 10! (trailer)

Settle in for a wonderful story about a sad, lonely widower fighting off developers who want his land. Carl, the widower, has a plan which executes perfectly, except that young Russell inadvertently goes along for the ride.

You’ll meet a whacky bird, dogs outfitted with collars that translate their barks into human speech (”Squirrel!”), and a demented adventurer. The story is bittersweet; the laughs are for all ages.

This one gets five stars and the LG calls it a keeper.

Vote
Originally uploaded by allyaubry

Don’t forget to cast your vote on November 3rd! While this election isn’t as big as the Presidential election, it is still important to exercise your right to vote. Some of the offices you’ll be casting your vote for include:

• School board
• County Treasurer
• Mayor
• Township positions
• and many more!

Visit this link at Chesco.org to learn about what your vote can do!

Photo Credit: Vote, Originally uploaded by allyaubry (Flickr.com)
Vote
Originally uploaded by allyaubry

The LG had not seen or played with Google Earth yet. Decided a Friday was a good time to look at it and see what’s to be seen.

Utter amazement, and a bit of a feeling of Big Brother watching. But, wow. Took a look at a favorite spot – Notre Dame de Paris. And, there she is. With available 3-D model to download, with photos people have uploaded taken from various angles… Latitude and longitude are included, so for you geocaching and GPS types, everything you need is there.

There are tours to take, places to visit, and if you’re the nostalgic type places to revisit like that brasserie on the Ile St Louis with the smashing view of the rear of Notre Dame, not to mention all the tourist traffic! Locate it: 48 51 10.72 N 2 21 11.99 E

Have fun!

Those of you who log on to the ccls.org website to manage your account might have noticed a new feature: a button on the right side of your account page that says “My Reading History”. This nifty feature will log every item you check out, so you can keep track of which titles you’ve already read/seen/heard. The library goddesses recommend it for lots of reasons: find that favorite author whose name is on the tip of your tongue, check to see if you’ve read that familiar-sounding book, or simply see how many books you read this summer.

Why did it take so long to add this feature? Because librarians are concerned about patron privacy and don’t like the idea of a system tracking patrons’ borrowing history (this is one of the reasons that our system doesn’t store a list titles you’ve checked out after they’re returned). To help safeguard your privacy, the My Reading History program is protected by a password that you create. No one else – not even library staff – will know your password or be able to see your history, though we can reset the password if you forget it.

To get started, follow this link and log in to your library account. The reading history will begin with today’s date and continue until you deactivate it.

Aren’t babies cute? From the National Zoo.

And, one very cool library car-park….

That’s all for a busy, rainy Thursday from your library!

If you’re into statistics, and especially if you’re not, check out www.gapminder.org for great visual presentations of statistics demonstrating the “gap” between the US and other countries of the world for such topics as unemployment and personal income, family size and life-expectancy, and “who has the most of?” There are also graphs showing unemployment figures as they change over time for the regions of the US, population growth and immigration rates. Most of the stats are taken from UN sources.

The graphs are often quite sophisticated – the short 2:36 minute tutorial gives an overview of how to look at specific points on the graphs over time, how to focus on an element, and where to find the raw data behind the graphs.

This year, we’re gearing up to have one of the best Kickoff Day celebrations ever. Aside from registering for the Summer Reading Club (ages 8+ will do online registration), you can enjoy felicitous amusements such as:

• Free balloons
• Summer reading info, tote bags, bookmarks, and calendars
• A make-&-take craft
• A free “tattoo” parlor
• The Usborne Book Fair: the books you buy earn money for the library!
• Pei-Jun Hung, giving a sneak preview of the “Chinese Boogie” program of July 16th

And…(drumroll)…

• “Special guests” from the barnyard of Spring Brook Farm – here from 10:00-12:00, weather permitting

But what if you miss Kickoff Day? Not to worry, you can still register for the club at any time through June or July, and the Usborne Book Fair will be here through Tuesday, June 16th. There is also a whole calendar of fun summer events available at the children’s desk for your perusal.