Blog Posts by mingh

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Ming was named after an evil Emperor. But she reads more than said evil Emperor, including nonfiction and almost all genres. She should read more in the Romance genre but that genre is forbidden on the planet Mongo.



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Understanding Baseball Cards
04/06/12
Well, here we go again starting another season of baseball in Chicago. Not sure about the teams this year. However, some of you have some baseball cards that might be worth some money. Checkout the Baseball Card Price Guide for more information. Also, if you want to know more about the whole process of how the baseball card collectibles grew into such big business, check out these titles. Baseball Cards History

Sacrilege : a Thriller
by S.J. Parris

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04/02/12

London, summer of 1584: Radical philosopher, ex-monk, and spy Giordano Bruno suspects he is being followed by an old enemy. He is shocked to discover that his pursuer is in fact Sophia Underhill, a young woman with whom he was once in love. When Bruno learns that Sophia has been accused of murdering her husband, a prominent magistrate in Canterbury, he agrees to do anything he can to help clear her name.

In the city that was once England's greatest center of pilgrimage, Bruno begins to uncover unsuspected secrets that point to the dead man being part of a larger and more dangerous plot in the making. He must turn his detective's eye on history,on Saint Thomas Becket, the twelfth-century archbishop murdered in Canterbury Cathedral, and on the legend surrounding the disappearance of his body, in order to solve the crime.

As Bruno's feelings for Sophia grow more intense, so does his fear that another murder is about to take place; perhaps his own. But more than Bruno's life is at stake in this vividly rendered, impeccably researched, and addictively page-turning whodunit;the stability of the kingdom hangs in the balance as Bruno hunts down a brutal murderer in the shadows of England's most ancient cathedral.


Saving for the Future
04/02/12
So you didn't win the lottery. We have books on investing for the future and saving for the hard times. Even if you don't have a lot of money you can save for the future. Click here for some suggestions on managing your personal finances.

Marathon Training
03/26/12
Over 34,000 people signed up to run the Shamrock Shuffle here in the Chicago area. Of course the biggest race in the area is the Bank of America Chicago Marathon in October. If you are looking to start training for any kind of race or just to keep in shape, we have the books and DVDs for you. Click here to find everything about training to run.

The Technologists
by Matthew Pearl

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03/26/12
The newest book from the acclaimed writer of The Dante Club. Boston, 1868. The Civil War may be over but a new war has begun, one between the past and the present, tradition and technology.
 
On a former marshy wasteland, the daring Massachusetts Institute of Technology is rising, its mission to harness science for the benefit of all and to open the doors of opportunity to everyone of merit. But in Boston Harbor a fiery cataclysm throws commerce into chaos, as ships’ instruments spin inexplicably out of control. Soon after, another mysterious catastrophe devastates the heart of the city. Is it sabotage by scientific means or Nature revolting against man’s attempt to control it?

The shocking disasters cast a pall over M.I.T. and provoke assaults from all sides—rival Harvard, labor unions, and a sensationalistic press. With their first graduation and the very survival of their groundbreaking college now in doubt, a band of the Institute’s best and brightest students secretly come together to save innocent lives and track down the truth, armed with ingenuity and their unique scientific training.

Studded with suspense and soaked in the rich historical atmosphere for which its author is renowned, The Technologists is a dazzling journey into a dangerous world not so very far from our own, as the America we know today begins to shimmer into being.


I Was Amelia Earhart
by Jane Mendelsohn

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03/22/12
A number of fiction books have been written about the life of Amelia Earhart. I Was Amelia Earhart has her surviving the crash of her plane with her flight navigator, Fred Noonan.
 
In this brilliantly imagined novel, Amelia Earhart tells us what happened after she and her navigator, Fred Noonan, disappeared off the coast of New Guinea one glorious, windy day in 1937. And she tells us about herself.  There is her love affair with flying ("The sky is flesh") . . . .

There are her memories of the past: her childhood desire to become a heroine ("Heroines did what they wanted") . . . her marriage to G.P. Putnam, who promoted her to fame, but was willing to gamble her life so that the book she was writing about her round-the-world flight would sell out before Christmas.

There is the flight itself -- day after magnificent or perilous or exhilarating or terrifying day ("Noonan once said any fool could have seen I was risking my life but not living it").

And there is, miraculously, an island ("We named it Heaven, as a kind of joke"). And, most important, there is Noonan . . .

 
Here are other fiction books about the life of Amelia Earhart.

The Search for Amelia Earhart
03/22/12
This year marks the 75th anniversary of the disappearance of Amelia Earhart over the South Pacific as she tried to be the first woman to circumnavigate the globe in her plane. Based on new evidence, a search will be made later this year to some of the smaller islands where plane debris and other evidence of inhabitants appeared.  There have been many theories about her surviving a plane crash and living out her life on an island.  For more information check out these titles about Amelia Earhart.

Airs and Graces
by Roz Southey

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03/15/12
January, 1737. Snow blankets Newcastle Upon Tyne. With plans afoot to build new Assembly Rooms for concerts, musician sleuth Charles Patterson is more concerned with the murder of an entire family. It looks an open-and-shut case--the murderer was the fashionable Alice Gregson, who'd upset several neighbours with her snobbish London airs and graces. But where is she now? And why is her sister convinced of her innocence? Patterson must solve the case before the snow clears, allowing the murder to escape the town

Illinois Governors in the News
03/15/12
Former Governor Rod Blagovich starts his prison term this week. Arlington Heights Library has many titles about Illinois politics, Governors, and other characters. For more information check out these titles.  Illinois Governors

Girl Reading
by Katie Ward

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03/10/12
Seven portraits. Seven artists. Seven girls and women reading. 

A young orphan poses nervously for a Renaissance maestro in medieval Siena. An artist's servant girl in seventeenth-century Amsterdam snatches a moment away from her work to lose herself in tales of knights and battles. An eighteenth century female painter completes a portrait of a deceased poetess for her lover.  A Victorian medium poses with a book in one of the first photographic studios. A girl suffering her first heartbreak witnesses intellectual and sexual awakening during the Great War. A young woman reading in a bar catches the eye of a young man who takes her picture.  And in the not-so-distant future a woman navigates the rapidly developing cyber-reality that has radically altered the way people experience art and the way they live.

Each chapter of Katie Ward’s kaleidoscopic novel takes us into a perfectly imagined tale of how each portrait came to be, and as the connections accumulate, the narrative leads us into the present and beyond. In gorgeous prose Ward explores our points of connection, our relationship to art, the history of women, and the importance of reading.  This dazzlingly inventive novel that surprises and satisfies announces the career of a brilliant new writer.