One change you’ll like plus new nonfiction to consider
I know what you’re thinking. How can we possibly manage another change in our lives when all we want is “normal.” But some changes are better than others. The day after this column is published, September 24, what we can think of as a corporate change takes place involving two library services. RB Digital, where we access some audiobooks plus magazines, bought out Overdrive, which has been the main platform for downloading e-books and audiobooks up to now. What does this mean? It means that RBD is going to use the superior, more user-friendly interface of Overdrive to house all the audiobooks combined between the two companies plus all the e-books Overdrive has always had. No more chasing around to two separate platforms to search for audiobooks.
Does that mean the little RBD icon on the library’s homepage changes? No, because RBD will still be using that link for magazines for now at least. We’ll let you know when there are any changes to that. Hang in there and enjoy the expanded familiar Overdrive system and continue to download your magazines as always using the RBD link until you hear otherwise. Of course, feel free to call the library for clarity and assistance any time. Think of all this as RB Digital now.
Speaking of changes, one bonus change we are undergoing is the Library’s blog development. It is designed to be an additional resource in a number of categories such as programming, books and author information, reviews, events, and much more. Please follow the blog or check out the newest posts (and add your own comments) anytime. You can link to the blog from the library’s homepage and find links to new posts on our FB site.
Meantime, readers might be interested in a few nonfiction books that the library has newly available. Here is a sampling of some that might interest you.
Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics: a 10% Happier How-to Book by Dan Harris and Jeff Warren might answer that question many of us secretly have about meditation – how we do it when our minds keep wandering around freely. As Dan Harris phrases it, “This book will help you be more focused and less yanked around, and my wife tells me, less annoying.” Think of this book more as an entertaining memoir of two guys (“one American neurotic and one Canadian mystic”) who rent a rock band style bus and drive across 18 states to ask what keeps people from meditating. A study in “America’s neurotic underbelly” just might help us all calm down. Critics say the book is very funny.
The French Art of Not Trying Too Hard by Ollivier Pourriol takes us into a whole different mindset without meditating. Simply study the French. This book relies on the philosophers who inform the French mindset to help us understand how they use a looser grip when it comes to raising children, cooking that haute cuisine meal, or stepping out the door looking effortlessly chic. A few of the philosophers who get a look are Descartes, Rodin (through his art), and Stendhal. (I recall a number of years ago my daughter-in-law tried to explain to me the effectiveness of the laissez-faire child rearing in France which, I note, she and my son adopted for about thirty seconds and abandoned when absolutely no one knew where the remote was. But we can always learn, and the French are undeniably interesting.)
Twyla Tharp, the dancer, choreographer and author, wrote Keep It Movingabout finding and maintaining purpose as one ages. Movement and exercise are key to this dancer, so she’s right in there with all the best medical advice on aging. Tharp defines fear of aging as a disease and the cure is never “chasing youth,” an impossible endeavor, but instead never giving up and settling for less than we can do at any age. This sounds wonderfully motivational and practical.
Of course, the library has an extensive selection of new nonfiction you can browse or call us for ideas.
See you at the Library! Published in the Frankenmuth News 9/23/2020 Roz Weedman