Clearly the financial world is in crisis leaving us mere working folks wondering where to turn and how to pay for life’s essentials as well as some frills.  Books provide reasonably priced entertainment. Local libraries offer some really nice events as do some bookstores . Nothing helps to center me like reading some good books or getting involved in some book-related programs.

So, to start your New Year here is a selection of book events:

How have you used your library recently? How has the library helped your family? The New York Library Association wants to know — and so do we.

You see, libraries around the state expect to seriously cut hours and services to deal with the state’s slashing of $18 million in Library Aid for 2009-10, says NYLA director Michael J. Borges in a news release which he blasted through emails. And this comes at a time when libraries in every community are noticing increased usage from the community.

The cuts would bring state library aid to the 1993 level, said Borges who is urging the association and local groups to fight the cuts.

“Libraries continue to be targeted for disproportionate cuts to solve the state’s budget problems. We are willing to do our part, but an 18 percent cut in funding is both unfair and counter-productive,” he said.

The cuts will fall heavily on the 73 library systems, such as Westchester Library System, Mid=Hudson Library System and the Ramapo-Catskill Library System in our Hudson Valley region, which Borges described as “the backbone of our libraries and information infrastructure.” The systems provide libraries with shared services, like inter-library loans, centralized cataloging, website hosting and staff training — and represents resource sharing in a cost-effective and efficient manner that saves every community money.

According to NYLA, president-elect Barak Obama used resources at the New York Public Library o find his job as a community organizer in Chicago. His job search was the subject of a 2005 American Libraries magazine article, which was recently cited in a Nov. 10, 2008 Daily News editorial.

So, email me with examples of how you use your library in your community. I’ll share your ideas and send them to the library association. My email is bnackman@LoHud.com

Elizabeth Alexander, whom some  might remember from an event earlier this month at Hudson Valley Writer’s Center and earlier this fall at Reid Castle, will be the inaugural poety at the Jan. 20 ceremony for President Barak Obama.  Her publisher, Graywolf Press in St. Paul, Minn. confirmed this information this afternoon after news organizations released the information.

The news was circulated through the literary world today on Mediabistro’s posting on Galley Cat citing both  Twitter and Washington Post. The Post said the Alexander will be the “fourth poet  to read at a swearing in after Robert Frost, who read at John F. Kennedy’s in 1961; Maya Angelou, who read at Clinton’s in 1993; and Miller Williams, who read in 1997, according to government officials.”

Very exciting for poetry fans.

Alexander was a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize and professor at Yale University during the 2007-08 year. Locally, though, she was a featured speaker in October at Manhattanville College’s Master of Art in Writing Program Meet the Writers literary series which I mentioned in a previous blog. The Hudson Valley Writers’ Center small press, just published her newest chapbook and she read at the Sleepy Hollow center this month.

Everyone is hearing about the new movie “Revolutionary Road” starring two of the most appealing stars of our current time, Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio. It is based on the 1961 novel (Random House) of the same title by Richard Yates, a grim tale of an unhappy marriage and life in the country focusing on characters Frank and April Wheeler. The appeal of Yates’ writing is how he captured every day people in every day lives. Sometimes gray, but unusually real characters.

But wait, could it be that the country life was based on Putnam County from 40 years ago?

I am not just pulling this out of thin air. Mahopac librarian Patricia Kaufman had the same thought and went to her library’s shelves to pull out a 4-year-old biography of Yates.

According to biographer, Blake Bailey, the novelist was born in Yonkers in 1926 and in the late 1950s bought a home in Mahopac. It is said that perhaps he wrote “Revolutionary Road” while living there. So while the story is indeed set in suburban Connecticut, it might have plenty of overtones of Ma-ho-pac.

Here are some excerpts from Bailey’s book “A Tragic Honesty: The Life and Work of Richard Yates” (Picador/Macmillan, 2004):

“In the summer of 1956 the Yates moved to the rural town of Mahopac in Putnam County, New York, where they lived on a private estate.” The nearly 100-acre property was owned by an aging actress who had founded the Putnam County Playhouse, writes Bailey. On the estate were overgrown gardens, crumbling cottages and a pink stucco cottage “a sort of forlorn charm” that the Yates family lived in.

As well, there was a wellhouse at the end of a long winding dirt road. “With his landlady’s blessing, Yates installed a table, chair, typewriter, and kerosene stove, and wrote most of Revolutionary Road there,” Bailey writes on page 179 of his 688-page biography.

It is not often that a story about a “banned book” comes from our very own Hudson Valley region. But indeed, we have a situation out of New Rochelle where high school staff are accused of tearing out portions of a memoir that discusses oral sex. My colleague Aman Ali wrote the story yesterday.

It appears some English department staffers at New Rochelle high apparently ripped out pages of a “Girl, Interrupted,” a book used in a senior class. School officials are trying to sort out the issue and clearly they are coming out against censoring books.

Chris Finan, president of American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, quickly expressed his concerns when I contacted him this morning. The topic of censorship is something he follows daily and has done so for decades. I could almost feel the outrage jumping out from his email.

“I am shocked that an English teacher in 21st century America would admit that she had engaged
in bowdlerizing a literary work. I am glad that school officials have now repudiated this intellectual vandalism,” he said today.

ABFFE’s mission is to promote and protect the free exchange of ideas, particularly those contained in books, by opposing restrictions on the freedom of speech. It was founded in 1990 by the American Booksellers Association based in Tarrytown.

Finan said he is preparing a letter to the school board.

ISchool officials, Ali said, were upset to learn that a book was tampered with. Some Lo/Hud.com readers were also concerned about the sexual element of a book discussed in a class of teenagers. You can read Ali’s full story at Lohud.com where he quotes Principal Donald Conetta as saying: ” We don’t censor and when any book is tampered with; it creates concern.”

“Girl, Interrupted” is a 1994 best-selling memoir by Susanna Kaysen (Borzoi Books/ Alfred A. Knopf), where she talks about her 18 months as a patient in a psychiatric hospital in the 1960s. She tells lots about the hospital, her condition and personality disorders. The book was also the basis of a major film starring Angelina Jolie.

Forum comments on The Journal News story range from those who say the book should not have been included in the curriculum anyway to those who say teachers or staffers should not tear apart books to remove parts they don’t like. Some posters note that high school students didn’t need the book to learn about oral sex anyway.

Ah, yes, the unfiltered comments from those who don’t have to leave their real names.

Any other comments — and certainly information about the issue are welcome. Has anyone read the book?

The Chappaqua Library sends along word, through its neatly done newsletter, that it is celebrating its 30th year at its Greeley Avenue location. To say a “happy birthday” to the library, staff is planning a week long party 10 am to 1 pm  Monday, Dec. 15 to Friday, Dec. 20.

Staff is planning refreshments, balloons and what is described as “general merriment.” Also, party goers are asked to bring in items for  a local food bank, as their needs are especially urgent this year. Suggested donations are nonperishable (and non-expired) foods.

Also — and not incidentally — the library is acknowledging the long service of Carol Birch,  head of children’s services, who is retiring this month. She has been at the library for 22 years and “has graciously shared her unique and special gift for storytelling with the Chappaqua community, and it has enriched us all,” reads the newsletter.  She has run countless stories to children and has even made a video for the library about her favorite  books for children.

This week we have a really neat recommendation culled from an interview by my colleague Elizabeth Ganga, who interviewed Parag Khanna, a recognized expert on global politics who was also selected by Esquire Magazine as one of “The 75 Most Influential People of the 21st Century.” Her interview-story will  appear next week.

Right now, he says he is reading “Kingmakers: The Invention of the Modern Middle East” by Karl E. Meyer and Shireen Blair Brysac (W.W. Norton, 2008).

“This dynamic husband-wife duo have written some of the richest accounts of 19th and 20th century Eurasian history, and in this book they profile British and American adventurers and viceroys who attempted to create the Middle East in their image and why they failed. It’s highly relevant given what’s happened this past decade in West-Mideast relations,” he told Ganga this afternoon in an email.

Parag Khanna is Director of the Global Governance Initiative and Senior Research Fellow in the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation. He has written “The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order” (Random House, 2008).

In his book, Khanna offers a study of the 21st century’s emerging geopolitical market place dominated by first world superpowers, the U.S., Europe and China.  He has served as an advisor to U.S. Special Operation Forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and coached Barack Obama’s campaign on foreign policy.

You can hear him speak and meet him at 7:30 p.m. Dec. 10 at Chappaqua Library on North Greeley Avenue.
It is free and open to the public

Katonah Village Librarian Van Kozelka reports that the Katonah Village Library has reopened in its new temporary location, the lower level of the library, as of today. It is, though, in the midst of about three months worth of renovations to the upper floor — a new ceiling, improved lighting, carpeting — and new downstairs bathrooms.

She asks that beginning today, the public enter the library through the lower doors. During this interim period all 2008 fiction and non-fiction books, DVDs, CDs, audiobooks, and many reference books (including medical and college guides) will be available. If the library does not immediately have what a person wants, it is possible to order it through Westchester Library System interlibrary loan. Internet computers are still available for public use. In addition, the children’s room will be open, and all regularly scheduled programs will continue. However, there are no public bathrooms available until the renovations are completed.