In honor of magician David Blaine's latest stunt, which he is performing this week in Times Square, I'm (sort of) devoting this post to magic.

My favorite book I've read all year was actually published last year: Greg Galloway's As Simple As Snow. The book has been noted for having a memorable first line:

Anna Cayne had moved here in August just before our sophmore year in high school, but by February she had, one by one, killed everyone in town.

Anne Cayne, the new goth girl in town, begins a relationship with an unnamed protagonist, an "average Joe" student who becomes swept up in her intelligence, uncanny communication, and amazing mix CDs (I'm going to have a music geek moment here, but how many "teen" novels out there mention bands like Felt, The Smiths, and Bonnie "Prince" Billy? I'm impressed!). The book follows their romance and her subsequent disappearance, which leads to hundreds of unanswered questions, clues, and a mystery too deep to be contained within the book. In fact, you can sign up at www.assimpleassnow.com to have clues e-mailed to you on a weekly basis. What other books do this?

But, getting back to the theme of this post, I should mention that Anna, ASAS's main character, is obsessed with Houdini, most notably, the codes that he and his wife invented together. This led me to read the new Houdini biography, Escape!: The Story of the Great Houdini by Sid Fleischman. Through reading this, you realize that Houdini is really the grandfather of modern magic. Although David Blaine and Criss Angel perform elaborate stunts, most of their feats are modern revivals of old Houdini acts. To see some of this magic in action, be sure to check out the new DVD Criss Angel Mindfreak: Halloween.

And if you think that magic is kind of stupid, may I recommend the TV show Arrested Development? Gob Bluth, one of the show's main characters, is a hilarious failure as a magician, botching almost every trick he attempts to perform. In one episode, he is one-upped by guest star Ben Stiller who plays Tony Wonder, a magician whose act is largely based on the fact that he can make bread appear out of thin air. Get it? Tony Wonder? And yes, I have hyped Arrested Development in this blog before, but I don't care. I love this show.

And so ends my (super-long) post on magic.

TNT is showing a movie called The Librarian tonight and of course, I'm going to watch it. Not because I think Noah Wyle is a cool guy (BTW, does anybody else think he doesn't look that great in his IMDB photo?), but because there are so few movies about librarians that I feel obligated. Some library school students (yes, there is such a thing as library school and yes, I went to one myself) compiled a list of movies featuring librarians. My favorite library movie of all time actually inspired me to become a librarian myself: Party Girl starring Parker Posey.

Do you have any favorite movies featuring librarians? Do you have any thoughts on tonight's movie? Leave a comment!

John Green, author of the award-winning book Looking for Alaska (which I am in the middle of right now and will definitely blog about later), was recently interviewed on another fabulous blog, Pop Goes the Library. When asked what his area of pop cultural expertise was, he replied "Are conjoined twins part of pop culture? If so, definitely conjoined twins." This got me thinking about my own brief fascination with conjoined twins...

A few summers ago, I read the novel Chang and Eng by Darin Strauss. The book is a work of historical fiction about the famous conjoined twins named Chang and Eng Bunker, who were born in 1811. The twins were joined at the sternum by a flap of skin and although they could have been easily separated in modern times, doctors weren't up to the challenge 200 years ago. They were discovered in their native Siam by a British merchant and were brought to America to tour in freak shows owned by circus entrepeneur P.T. Barnum. As they became more famous, they became known as the "Siamese Twins," given that they were from Siam. This is why this term is still around today.

The twins eventually settled down on a southern plantation and married a pair of sisters, having 22 children between them. The book Chang and Eng is told from the perspective of Chang, and fictionally depicts the lives of the twins and the natural struggles that come from being less than one foot away from somebody for your entire life. Next time you get mad at your sibling, you can at least be thankful that you aren't literally joined at the hip!

For further reading about Chang and Eng, you can check out The Two: A Biography by Irving Wallace or the fictional God's Fool by Mark Slouka. For further reading about conjoined twins in general, check out Joined at Birth : The Lives of Conjoined Twins by Elaine Landau.

The Golden Globes were on last night and although I didn't end up watching them (I Love New York was on- cut me some slack!) I did notice that Sacha Baron Cohen won for Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture- Musical or Comedy. Niiiiiiiice. Given the fact that I saw Borat three times, this makes me very happy! For a complete list of winners, visit the Golden Globes website. And if you like to see the worst in red carpet fashion, be sure to check out Go Fug Yourself, one of my favorite blogs.

Each year, teen librarians in the American Library Association select ten books to receive Alex Awards. What are the Alex Awards, you ask?

The Alex Awards were first given annually beginning in 1998, and became an official ALA award in 2002.The Alex Awards are given to ten books written for adults that have special appeal to young adults, ages 12 through 18. The winning titles are selected from the previous year's publishing.The award is sponsored by the Margaret Alexander Edwards Trust. Edwards was a young adult specialist for many years at the Enoch Pratt Library in Baltimore. Her work is described in her book Fair Garden and the Swarm of Beasts, and over the years she has served as an inspiration to librarians who serve young adults. The Alex Awards are named after Edwards, who was called “Alex” by her friends.

This year's winning titles are:

* The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly
* The Whistling Season by Ivan Doig.
* Eagle Blue: A Team, A Tribe, and A High School Basketball Season in Arctic Alaska by Michael D'Orso.
* Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen.
* Color of the Sea by John Hamamura.
* Floor of the Sky by Pamela Carter Joern.
* The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game by Michael Lewis.
* Black Swan Green by David Mitchell.
* The World Made Straight by Ron Rash.
* The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield.

I have made a display of the 2005, 2006 and 2007 Alex Awards winners in the Teen section. Check it out!

And, in case you missed it, Greg Galloway, author of the 2006 Alex Award-winning novel As Simple As Snow will be here in March!

Today I stumbled upon this website. The guy on the site made a poster with the book covers to every book he's ever read, depicting 750 books in all. What a cool project!

He first organized all of his books through the website LibraryThing, which is an online program that can help you catalog your personal book collection. He also asked his friends and family to help him remember titles of books that he may have forgotten, since he included books from his childhood. A tool that he doesn't mention is the database NoveList, which you can access
on the "Research Online" portion of our website under "Books, Literature & Reading." If you remember parts of a plot, but can't remember the book, you can do a keyword search. For example, if you fondly recall a book about a monkey flying a kite, you might find H.A. Rey's Curious George Flies a Kite (SPOILER ALERT: this is my favorite one because George gets a baby bunny at the end).

Thanks to everybody who came last night to meet with our architect. Everybody had some great input on what students need from a library:

- More meeting space, especially with multimedia capabilities.
- Comfortable seating to create a more welcoming environment.
- A more expansive cafe with more tea and food choices.
- More computers, especially laptops that can be checked-out.
- Stations to preview new music.
- Board games that can be checked-out in the library.

While a lot of these things will have to wait for actual construction to take place, I will try to accommodate by purchasing some board games. If you have any suggestions, feel free to e-mail me or stop by and let me know. I'm very partial to Tabloid Teasers, but it apparently hasn't been manufactured since 1991. I might have to do some searching on Ebay... Also, be sure to check out Teen Game Day on Saturday, March 3rd.

For updates on the library's building project, be sure to check out our new Building Blog.

* UPDATE: You guys got a shout-out on the Building Blog!

Late afternoon on Friday, this lady tried to come into the library. Maybe she wanted a library card?