Finding perfect summer read easier than ever

Are you look­ing for some­thing good to read but are over­whelmed by the choices avail­able to you? The Delaware County Dis­trict Library has a vari­ety of resources to help you find the per­fect book.

One of the eas­i­est and best ways to find a “read-alike” is to sim­ply search the title of a book you really liked in the library’s cat­a­log, and you will see a list of sim­i­lar books on the right hand side of the page. For exam­ple, I recently read These Things Hid­den by Heather Gudenkauf, a good sus­pense­ful novel with won­der­ful char­ac­ter devel­op­ment, and when I searched the title in the library’s cat­a­log, there were five books with sim­i­lar themes listed. There were also sev­eral “tags,” (descrip­tors for the book) and when I clicked a tag, I was rewarded with dozens of addi­tional titles.

You can also use the cat­a­log to search for books by the same author by click­ing on the author’s name in the record you retrieve. When I clicked on Gudenkauf’s name, the cat­a­log sup­plied the names of the other books she wrote.

The library recently sub­scribed to the “Nov­eL­ist Plus” data­base that helps you find a book to read based on your read­ing inter­ests. The pow­er­ful and com­pre­hen­sive data­base fea­tures book dis­cus­sion guides, read-alikes and reviews and rec­om­men­da­tions for thou­sands of books. You can access this data­base from any Inter­net com­puter, too. Just click on “Research” on the library’s web­site, delawarelibrary.org.

The best resources in the library to help you find a good book to read (or lis­ten to) or a good movie to watch are the librar­i­ans who work here. We are all avid read­ers, and the best part of our job is suc­cess­fully con­nect­ing you with a book you will find sat­is­fy­ing and enjoy­able. Please don’t hes­i­tate to ask any one of us for a rec­om­men­da­tion. We will take the time to “inter­view” you to match your tastes with the per­fect title.

The start of the Lon­don Olympics prompted lots of questions.

An Olympic gym­nast with only one leg? Surely my friend is wrong!

Actu­ally, your friend is not pulling your leg (sorry!). George Eyser (born Aug. 31, 1870, date of death unknown) was a German-American gym­nast who com­peted in the 1904 Sum­mer Olympics, earn­ing six medals in one day, includ­ing three gold and two sil­ver medals. Eyser com­peted with a wooden pros­the­sis for a left leg, hav­ing lost his real leg after being run over by a train. Despite his dis­abil­ity, he won gold in the vault, an event which then included a jump over a long horse with­out aid of a spring­board. The Olympic Games-Athens 1896-Athens 2004 was the source of this information. 

Did Muham­mad Ali really throw his gold medal into the Ohio River?

Muham­mad Ali states in his 1975 auto­bi­og­ra­phy that he threw his Olympic gold medal into the Ohio River after being refused ser­vice at a “whites-only” restau­rant, and fight­ing with a white gang. Whether this is true is still debated, although he was given a replace­ment medal dur­ing the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, where he lit the torch to start the games.

Who were the youngest and old­est Olympic gold medalists?

The offi­cial web­site of the Olympics (olympic.org) states that the youngest con­firmed male gold medal­ist is the Ger­man Klaus Zerta who was 13 years, 283 days when he com­peted as the coxswain in the Men’s Coxed Pairs, in 1960. The youngest woman to win Olympic gold was diver Mar­jorie Gestring, who, at the age of 13 years and 268 days, won the three meter spring­board event at the 1936 Games in Berlin. Oscar Swahn won a gold medal for shoot­ing at the 1912 Olympics, when he was 64 years and 280 days old. In 1908, British archery win­ner Sybil “Quee­nie” Newall became the old­est woman ever to win an Olympic gold medal at 53 years, 275 days.

If you have a ques­tion that you would like to see answered in this col­umn, mail it to Mary Jane San­tos, Delaware County Dis­trict Library, 84 E. Win­ter St., Delaware, OH 43015, or call 740–362-3861. You can also email your ques­tions by vis­it­ing delawarelibrary.org or directly to Mary Jane at mjsantos@delaware library.org . No mat­ter how you con­tact us, we’re always glad you asked!

Posted by Mary Santos on Jul 27 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.