"There is no problem a library card can't solve." How can you not love a book with a tagline like that? The Andreas family is one of readers. Their father, a renowned Shakespeare professor who speaks almost entirely in verse, has named his three daughters after famous Shakespearean women. When the sisters return to their childhood home, ostensibly to care for their ailing mother, but really to lick their wounds and bury their secrets, they are horrified to find the others there. See, we love each other. We just don't happen to like each other very much.But the sisters soon discover that everything they've been running from-one another, their small hometown, and themselves-might offer more than they ever expected. Check it out!

Author visit

Speaking at the library as part of the Friends of the Library's Hot Reads for Cold Nights program will be writer Kitty Gogins. She will discuss her book My Flag Grew Stars: World War II Refugees Journey to America. Refreshments will be served and door prizes awarded!

Tax time is here!

We've been fielding lots of questions about tax forms. Unfortunately, we have not yet received some of the most requested items, including the 1040 and 1040A instruction booklets. We've been told that the should arrive by the end of January and we'll put them out as soon as we get them! In the meantime, you can always get forms via the web, both state (MN or WI) and federal.

Interested in saving money and using less energy? Check out a Power Check watt meter from the Red Wing Public Library, courtesy of Xcel Energy. Not only can you "identify your home's high-energy-use appliances", you can "predict your savings in reducing appliance use, calculate the cost savings for replacing older appliances with energy-efficient models and discover your "energy vampires" -- appliances that use energy even when switched off." Ask the folks at the checkout desk for details!

Free eBook & eAudiobook class!

This Friday (Jan. 28) from 9am-10am, find out how to check out, download and transfer free eBooks and eAudiobooks from the library's collection. If possible, please bring your device (e.g., Nook, Sony Reader, etc). Registration is required as space is limited. Please call 651-385-3645 to register or send an email to rwpl@selco.info. We will offer other classes if there is demand, including an evening or weekend class for those who work during the day. So give us a call if you want to attend but can't make it this Friday!

Red Wing in the movies

Many of you are familiar with Entr'Acte, a film shot in Red Wing and starring local actors. But did you know that Red Wing has been seen in at least one other major film? Check out scene 6 in Mrs. Miracle, a 2010 film from Canada, and you'll see a panoramic shot of Red Wing. if you know of any other films featuring Red Wing scenes, please let us know!

In this profound and courageous memoir, Olivia Ames Hoblitzelle describes how her husband's Alzheimer's diagnosis at the age of seventy-two challenged them to live the spiritual teachings they had embraced during the course of their life together. Following a midlife career shift, Harrison Hobliztelle, or Hob as he was called, a former professor of comparative literature at Barnard, Columbia, and Brandeis University, became a family therapist and was ordained a Dharmacharya (senior teacher) by Thich Nhat Hanh. Hob comes to life in these pages as an incredibly funny and brilliant man who never stopped enjoying a good philosophical conversation-even as his mind, quite literally, slipped away from him. And yet when they first heard the diagnosis, Olivia and Hob's initial reaction was to cling desperately to the life they had had. But everything had changed, and they knew that the only answer was to greet this last phase of Hob's life consciously and lovingly.

Library closing

The library will be closed on Monday, January 17 in observance of the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday.

Award-winning Washington Post retirement columnist Stan Hinden’s bestselling How to Retire Happy helps you decide if you can retire now, or whether you have to stay on the job for a few more years. This trusted guide has been fully updated to address the stomach churning issues created by financial market volatility and the economic recession. Will you have enough money for health care? Do you need—and can you afford—a long term care policy? How much income can your savings produce? Check it out and answer these (and many other) questions!

In a work that beautifully demonstrates the rewards of closely observing nature, Elisabeth Bailey shares an inspiring and intimate story of her uncommon encounter with a common woodland snail. While an illness keeps her bedridden, Bailey watches a wild snail that has taken up residence on her nightstand. As a result, she discovers the solace and sense of wonder that this mysterious creature brings and comes to a greater under standing of her own confined place in the world. Told with wit and grace, The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating is a remarkable journey of survival and resilience, showing us how a small part of the natural world illuminates our own human existence and provides an appreciation of what it means to be fully alive.

Get a new eBook reader for Christmas?

Then you might be interested in these "10 tips for Your New eBook Reader" from the Dear Author blog. Very helpful, and after you've read it be sure to start checking out eBooks from our library!

New from Kim Edwards, author of the best seller The Memory-Keeper's Daughter, comes The Lake of Dreams. "At a crossroads in her life, Lucy Jarrett returns home from Japan, only to find herself haunted by her father's unresolved death a decade ago. Old longings stirred up by Keegan Fall, a local glass artist who was once her passionate first love, lead her into the unexpected. Late one night, as she paces the hallways of her family's rambling lakeside house, she discovers, locked in a window seat, a collection of objects that first appear to be useless curiosities, but soon reveal a deeper and more complex family past. As Lucy discovers and explores the traces of her lineage00from an heirloom tapestry and dusty political tracts to a web of allusions depicted in stained-glass windows throughout upstate New York-the family story she has always known is shattered, Lucy's quest for the truth reconfigures her family's history, links her to a unique slice of the suffragette movement, and yields dramatic insights that embolden her to live freely."

eBooks are here!

You can now get eBooks & eAudiobooks from the Red Wing Public Library! Check out, download and transfer them to a PC, Mac or variety of portable devices, including iPods, the Barnes & Noble Nook, Android devices and many more. For more information check out our help page, or just start browsing the catalog! Please call the reference desk if you have any questions

From Publishers Weekly: "In this absorbing conclusion to his chronicle of the nuclear age, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Rhodes describes the post-Cold War shift in the status of nuclear weapons from existential menace to alarming but tractable police problem. He focuses on attempts by the U.S. and the international community to squelch proliferation threats: efforts by UN inspectors to unearth and dismantle Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons program; white-knuckle negotiations over North Korea's bomb-making project; initiatives to return the defunct Soviet Union's nukes to Russia and keep its unemployed atomic scientists from getting into mischief; the campaign to convince non-nuclear states to stay that way through a permanent non-proliferation treaty. Rhodes makes the technical issues lucid and accessible, and the tale also has intrigue and suspense, heroes (Jimmy Carter) and villains (the Bush administration). It's a story of deceit, corrupt politics, and diplomatic half-measures, but also of improbable outbreaks of common sense and far-sightedness as doomsday stockpiles are bargained downward and nations grudgingly abandon nuclear ambitions. Rhodes shows us the heartening spectacle of humanity slowly turning away from the abyss."

If you like books like the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher, the Sookie Stackhouse Southern Vampire series by Charlaine Harris or the Hollows series by Kim Harrison, have we got a book list for you! it's called 25 Great Contemporary Paranormal Romance/Urban Fantasy books. The title's a little unwieldy but you are sure to find something you like!

Computer outage

Tonight, from 9:00pm until 10:00 pm (and hopefully not any later!). the regional library consortium (SELCO) will be performing maintenance on its network. This will prevent you from being able to access the catalog, your account, databases, or any other SELCO resources. We're sorry for the inconvenience! Please let us know if you have any questions.

From Publishers Weekly: "U.S. Army colonel turned academic, Bacevich offers an unsparing, cogent, and important critique of assumptions guiding American military policy. These central tenets, the "Washington rules", such as the belief that the world order depends on America maintaining a massive military capable of rapid and forceful interventions anywhere in the world, have dominated national security policy since the start of the cold war and have condemned the U.S. to "insolvency and perpetual war." Despite such disasters as America's defeat in Vietnam and the Cuban missile crisis, the self-perpetuating policy is so entrenched that no president or influential critic has been able to alter it. Bacevich argues that while the Washington rules found their most pernicious expression in the Bush doctrine of preventive war, Barack Obama's expansion of the Afghan War is also cause for pessimism." Well worth a read.