Birmingham Public Library Blog

Library visitors of all ages are invited to visit any Birmingham Public Library January 3-14 to participate in the 2011 Martin Luther King, Jr. Scavenger Hunt. Preschoolers are encouraged to locate each of the ten hidden game pieces while older visitors are encouraged to locate the hidden game piece and complete the fill-in-the-blank activity. This year Eileen Spinelli's poem, "Martin Luther King Jr." is featured. When the hunt is completed, each seeker will have a copy of the poem to keep. Participants who successfully complete the scavenger hunt may enter their names into a drawing for a free book about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Each Birmingham Public Library will draw three winners. The give-way books are Martin's Big Words: The Life of Dr. Martin Luther King , Jr. by Doreen Rappaport and Bryan Collier, Lift Every Voice and Sing by James Weldon Johnson and Bryan Collier and Martin Luther King, Jr. : A Dream of Hope by Alice Fleming.

Out by Natsuo Kirino is a brilliant Japanese murder mystery that’s not much of a mystery at all, at least not a mystery in the sense that we don’t know whodunit. Whodunit is a pretty, young wife and mother of two named Yayoi who is fed up with her husband Kenji’s philandering ways, and decides to strangle him one night in an uncharacteristic moment of rage. Assured that her children heard nothing of the struggle, she calls a friend who works the night shift with her at a boxed lunch factory. As she suspects, the pragmatic Masako Katori is not too surprised by the late call, and immediately sets the wheels in motion about how to make the body disappear and maybe make a little money off the insurance payout. Masako enlists the help of the trusted fifty-something Yoshie, whom she knows is in desperate need of money from caring for her bedridden mother-in-law. But while the two are butchering their first ever dead body in Masako’s bathroom, the fourth friend in their factory clique gets ...

The Birmingham Historical Society captures in a new book and exhibit seldom-seen murals that tell the story of an era, the history of our region, and the mood of a nation in hardship. Depression-era murals survive and thrive in both book and exhibit form thanks to the Birmingham Historical Society’s newest endeavor: identifying, assembling, presenting, and chronicling artworks which were created and appeared in the Birmingham area. “We just kept looking,” explains Marjorie White, BHS. “We found the murals still intact in some structures, never having been moved in all these years. We found collections tucked in attics, archives, and online. It has been a fascinating scavenger hunt to find this incredible art, created by artists between 1929 and 1939.” The exhibition Murals, Murals on the Wall 1929-1939 is on view through December 30, 2010 (the library is closed December 31) at the Birmingham Public Library in the 4th Floor Gallery. Th...

Take a look at the video above for a sample of Birmingham Public Library’s November 2010 Bards & Brews poetry slam. The Birmingham Public Library hosts it's next Bards & Brews poetry slam on January 7 at the Central Library . Live music and sign-up begins at 6:30 Call time is at 7:00

The Birmingham Historical Society captures in a new book and exhibit seldom-seen murals that tell the story of an era, the history of our region, and the mood of a nation in hardship. Depression-era murals survive and thrive in both book and exhibit form thanks to the Birmingham Historical Society’s newest endeavor: identifying, assembling, presenting, and chronicling artworks which were created and appeared in the Birmingham area. “We just kept looking,” explains Marjorie White, BHS. “We found the murals still intact in some structures, never having been moved in all these years. We found collections tucked in attics, archives, and online. It has been a fascinating scavenger hunt to find this incredible art, created by artists between 1929 and 1939.” The exhibition Murals, Murals on the Wall 1929-1939 is on view through December 30, 2010 (the library is closed December 31) at the Birmingham Public Library in the 4th Floor Gallery. The book, Digging Out of the Great Depression: Fe...

"In the heat of battle my father wove a tapestry of obscenities that as far as we know is still hanging in space over Lake Michigan." I can't remember if I ran out and bought In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash after seeing A Christmas Story on cable back in '83, or if I bought it before the movie just because the title caught my eye at some used bookstore, but it’s been a prized possession for decades. If you're like me and thousands of others who love this movie, you'll enjoy this book. The book fleshes out the characters, and it’s fun to learn the reasoning behind some of the throwaway movie scenes like why Ralphie gave the old man a can of Simoniz for Christmas. The nostalgic vignettes of In God We Trust are grittier than the lighthearted movie. One of the funniest running gags in the movie is the father’s epic (but G-rated) battle with the furnace; in the book, he’s not afraid to let the expletives rip at his wife: “FOR CHRISSAKE, STUPID, I SAID THE G...

True Grit opens Wednesday, December 22. Read all about the true grits. Every eight years or so, over the last forty years, I watch the movie True Grit , for which John Wayne won his only Oscar. It still holds up very well and doesn’t fail to entertain. Over the last thirty years or so I’ve harbored a growing guilty feeling that I should read the book it’s based on. Time after time I’ve read pieces about how its author, Charles Portis , is one of the least known great American writers and that True Grit is his best book. It’s regularly referred to as one of the great 20th century American novels that’s not yet accepted as one of the great 20th century American novels. When it came out in the late sixties, it was a best-seller, the movie was huge, and some critics since have felt that critical snobs at the time just couldn’t abide all that popularity. The novel was way out of step with the counterculture, too, and because of that it never attracted a wide younger audience. What’s inter...

Did you know that thousands of historians, journalists, novelists and other writers from around the world use the collections of the Birmingham Public Library Archives every year? Using the department’s collection of more than 30 million historical documents, these writers have produced hundreds of books, including five recipients of the Pulitzer Prize . Listed below are just some of the books researched at Birmingham Public Library and published this year. Alabama's Civil Rights Trail : an Illustrated Guide to the Cradle of Freedom by Frye Gaillard At the Dark End of the Street by Danielle L. McGuire Baseball in Birmingham by Clarence Watkins Birmingham Sunday by Larry Dane Brimner Condoleezza Rice : a Memoir of My Extraordinary, Ordinary Family and Me by Condoleezza Rice Encyclopedia of African American History by Leslie Alexander and Walter Rucker Extraordinary, Ordinary People : a Memoir of Family by Condoleezza Rice Fly Away by Peter Rutkoff and William Scott From Po...