Rising from the Plains by John McPhee
Book Available: Tuesday, August 24th
Discussion Date: Tuesday, September 14th

What You See in Clear Water by Geoff O’Gara
Book Available: Tuesday, September 14th
Discussion Date: Tuesday, October 12th

Windmill: Essays from Four Mile Ranch by David Romtvedt
Book Available: Tuesday, October 12th
Discussion Date: Tuesday, November 9th

Where Rivers Change Direction by Mark Spragg
Book Available: Tuesday, November 9th
Discussion Date: Tuesday, December 7th

The discussion leader for this series is Michael Konsmo, an Instructor of English at Northwest College. All discussions will be held from 6:00-7:00 p.m. in the Fireside Room of the Powell Branch Library. Make sure to sign-up in advance at the library as space is limited to 20 participants!

Participants in “Icons” will read and discuss Cash by Johnny Cash, Muhammad Ali by Thomas Hauser, Eleanor Roosevelt: Volume 1, 1884-1933 by Blanche Wiesen Cook, and Jane Fonda’s War by Mary Hershberger. The series is designed to examine what we think know about iconic American figures, as well as study how they used the power of their iconography to promote social change. Laura Crossett will lead the discussions.

The program is offered by the Wyoming Humanities Council and is sponsored by the We the People initiative of the National Endowment for the Humanities. For more information on the council’s programs, call 307-721-9243 or visit the council’s website at www.uwyo.edu/humanities.

Creator of the Sheriff Walt Longmire literary mysteries, he will be the guest of the Park County Library System August 21-22 in three free public programs.

Johnson begins his tour at the Park County Public Library in Cody at 12 noon on Saturday, August 21, following up at the Meeteetse Chocolatier at 7 p.m. the same day.

On Sunday, August 22 at 12 noon, Johnson goes to the Powell Branch Library for a pizza party.

Although not a native of the state, Johnson adopted Wyoming as home about 20 years ago. He settled in Ucross and eventually got serious about writing the Longmire stories, with the first book, The Cold Dish being published in 2005.

Junkyard Dogs, the latest in the series, came out in June this year.

An acclaimed writer and popular speaker, he is invited to appear around North America and Europe, but he said in a recent conversation with the Cody library that going to Wyoming towns and libraries gives him back a lot, partly because “it happens to be what I write about.”

He does not require a fee when he appears at Wyoming libraries, noting that the state’s libraries are a source of pride, and also that “we’re in this literacy thing together.” He said the best part of giving a talk is interacting with the audience when they pose questions.

Johnson has avoided writing “straight ahead westerns.” He explained that he “likes combining genres and writing in the fringes.”

His publisher, Viking/Penguin, allows him a lot of freedom in his novels and only requires that he write a mystery that has Walt Longmire in it, Johnson said.

The result is stories that are infused with humor while at the same time delving into social issues and crime, mostly against a background somewhere near the Big Horn Mountains. Some novels go to other scenes, such as Philadelphia, carrying the main characters to new environs.

Johnson said a television series based on his novels is currently in development with Warner Horizon Television and the TNT channel.

Jack Black plays a down-and-out rock star  in debit and desperate for money, becomes a substitute music teacher and the adventures begin. This movie is rated PG-13 and will be shown in the Fireside Room. Refreshments will be served.

If you would like to see some DVDs that Park County Library has added to its collection on American Indians, check out some titles in the nonfiction section of the Media area under the Dewey Number 970.00497. For example, see and hear a lecture by Mary Keller, of Cody, called Heart Mountain as Home. Another title is Sacred Lands, a presentation by the Curly Bear Wagner.

See a bigger list of titles added to the library in the past year:

American Indian Resources

Drop by between 11:00 and 2:00 and bring your lunch. We will have cookies and drinks, free books, fun balloon animals -– plus your prizes! If you can’t make it that day, come to the library any time after that.

Powell Branch Library will be hosting a Summer Reading Prize Party to celebrate the end of summer reading! Come to Plaza Diane on Wednesday, August 11 anytime between 1:00pm and 4:00 pm and join the celebration. We will have live entertainment, cookies and loads of fun. You will also be able to pick up any prizes that you won during summer reading. So, keep reading and don’t forget to turn in those tickets by Thursday, August 5th!

Our Summer Reading Party for kids will be Thursday, August 5 at 12 noon in the Meeteetse School Cafeteria. Lunch will be served (it’s free!), prizes will be awarded, and there will be FREE swimming at the Meeteetse Community Pool at 1 p.m. following the party!

Grown ups, note you can still turn in tickets through August 5. Stay turned for information about when you can pick up your prizes. Thanks again to all the community members and sponsors who help make our reading programs such a huge success!

Also, as a reminder, the Meeteetse Branch Library will be closed Friday, August 6 for annual cleaning.

The Search by Nora Roberts — Fiona Bristow narrowly escaped a killer eight years ago. Now she leads a peaceful life training search and rescue dogs on a small island. Then the killer shows up again, and it’s up to Fiona — with the help of her dogs and Simon Doyle, a cabinetmaker who’s had his eye on her — to escape for good.

Kings of the Earth by John Clinch — Vernon, Audie, and Creed Proctor are three brothers who work their farm in rural upstate New York, largely cut off from the world but content. But when Vernon is found dead — possibly asphyxiated — suddenly the world comes to them, and their world starts to unravel.

Faithful Place by Tana French — Twenty two years ago, Frank Mackey and his girlfriend Rosie were going to meet and elope, but she never showed up. Now he’s a detective, and he learns that someone has found her suitcase — and her remains.

The Glass Rainbow by James Lee Burke — The latest Dave Robicheaux mystery.

Live to Tell by Lisa Gardner — Boston police detective D.D. Warren returns — this time to investigate a case where it turns out that children may be the perpetrators, not the victims.

A Quiet Belief in Angels by R.J. Ellory — After the murder of a local girl, twelve-year-old Joseph Vaughn and his friends form The Guardians, a group they hope will prevent similar tragedies in their small southern town. They can’t, of course, and the aftershocks of that time continue to haunt Joseph, until they show up again in force fifty years later, when he is working as a detective in Brooklyn.

They’re Watching by Gregg Hurwitz — Screenwriter Patrick Davis’s morning starts out ordinarily enough — coffee, breakfast, newspaper — and a DVD inside the newspaper — a DVD of Patrick and his wife going about their daily business in their own house, but shot by no one they know.

Dust to Dust, The Night Killer, Scattered Graves by Beverly Connor — A trio from a series of books about a forensic investigator which have been compared to the early Patricia Cornwell.

American Music by Jane Mendelsohn — Honor is a physical therapist; Milo is a severely injured Iraq War veteran that she is treating. The novel takes place over the course Milo’s treatment, and over the course of the other lives they begin to have visions of — other lives wherein, it seems, they were always connected to one another.

The Rembrandt Affair by Daniel Silva — Art restorer and sometime detective Gabriel Allon takes on the case of a murdered art restorer and a recently discovered Rembrandt.

My Name Is Mary Sutter by Robin Oliveira — Mary Sutter is a midwife who desperately wants to become a doctor, but in upstate New York in 1860, that is an impossibility. When the Civil War breaks out, though, Mary travels to Washington, D.C. to assist a surgeon in a hospital there, and everything starts to change.

Father of the Rain by Lily King — Daley grows up in the Boston suburbs, watching her alcoholic father slowly — and sometimes boisterously — self-destruct. Now she is 29 and lives across the country and has made her own life for herself, but when her brother calls to say their father is dying she decides to go back and see what has become of him.

Lucy by Laurence Gonzales — Lucy is a child rescued by a primatologist from the jungles of the Congo and the war that is going on there. When they come back to Chicago, people initially figure Lucy is just making an adjustment to a new culture. But as time goes on, people start to wonder — is she entirely human? A what-if biological thriller about the possibilities that humans and apes are closer than we even think.

Sea Escape by Lynne Griffin — Laura and her mother Helen have been estranged for some time, but Laura goes back to care for Helen after she has a stroke, and while she is staying with her at her seaside cottage, she starts reading the voluminous correspondence between her mother and her long-dead father, a soldier turned war correspondent. Reading the letters both brings the women closer together and reveals secrets that both change and strengthen their ties.

Killer Instinct by Zoe Sharp — Charlie Fox is a motorcycle riding former army martial arts expert now working as a guard at a club, where things are anything but quiet. Lee Child wrote an introduction to this book by a British writer, and it’s garnered great reviews.

The Madonnas of Echo Park by Brando Skyhorse — The Madonnas of Echo Park are neither pop stars nor Virgin Marys — instead, they are women of all ages trying to make it in the barrio neighborhood of Echo Park in Los Angeles in this breakout novel in stories that the author wrote in part as an apology to a girl he wouldn’t dance with many years ago because she was Mexican.

The Chill of Night by James Hayman — Dead lawyer stuffed in the trunk of her BMW. Witness is a teenager with schizophrenia. Freezing weather in Portland. All the set up for Detective Sargent Michael McCabe’s second outing.

The Hundred-Foot Journey by Richard C. Morais — A novel for anyone who loves food, restaurants, and the food business, about an Indian family that moves to France and tries to make a go of serving Indian cuisine in the Alps.

Red Hook Road by Ayelet Waldman — An hour after their wedding, a young couple die in a car crash. Over the next four summers, their families — the bride’s family a wealthy clan from New York who have summered in Maine since the dawn of time; the groom’s a bunch lower-middle-class locals in the small Maine town — figure out how to deal with the tragedy, and with each other.

Nonfiction
No Way Down: Life and Death on K2 by Graham Bowley — A gripping account of the 2008 climbing season on the world’s second highest — and often considered deadliest — peak.

Mini Farming: Self-Sufficiency on 1/4 Acre by Brett L. Markham — A guide to raising 85% of your food in your back yard, with a focus on keeping your bottom line as low as possible.

Buffalo Bill: Scout, Showman, Visionary by Steve Friesen — A picture-rich history of the Scout.

Blindsided: Surviving a Grizzly Attack and Still Loving the Great Bear by Jim Cole and Tim Vandehey — Jim Cole tells the story of the day he was nearly killed by a grizzly in Yellowstone.

Up Tunket Road: The Education of a Modern Homestead by Philip Ackerman-Leist with illustrations by Erin Ackerman-Leist — For those who prefer to read about other people’s self-sufficiency experiments rather than running their own, this is a charming memoir about trying to live off the land in Vermont.

From the Stacks
An occasional feature highlighting books buried in the stacks that you really shouldn’t miss.
A Country Year: Living the Questions by Sue Hubbell — My cousin compares this book to Walden, and that’s not totally inapt, but Hubbell’s book is funnier, and more contemporary. It chronicles a little over a year of her life as a beekeeper in Missouri, her observations of the natural world, her dealings with her eccentric neighbors, and her truck, which goes by the moniker Press On Regardless.

Brothers and Keepers by John Edgar Wideman — Wideman was teaching at the University of Wyoming when he wrote this book back in 1984. I picked up a copy of a book of his short stories on a trip to the Grinnell College bookstore when I was in high school, but I had no idea until recently that there was a real life story behind some of the things he writes about in his fiction. Wideman grew up in the Pittsburgh ghetto but went on to become a distinguished writer and professor. His younger brother, meanwhile, went on to a life of crime, and is now serving a life sentence for murder. In this memoir, Wideman seeks to figure out how two boys from the same place — the same family — could end up in such different places.