Adult Winter Reading Program 2008
Warm Up with a Cool Book
Continues thru February 29
It’s never too late to sign up for our winter reading program and get some ideas for great reads.  Sign up at the Central Library Readers’ Advisory Desk or at the branch libraries.  For more information, call our Readers' Advisory Desk at (847) 923-3189.

Dann & Raymond’s Movie Club
Thursday, January 3, 7:30-9:30 p.m.
AV Department
Daily Herald film critic Dann Gire and award-winning author Raymond Benson present another installment in their series of film discussions.  This month:  Saddle up and Pass the Beans - Dann & Raymond Pick Their Favorite Westerns.

Dann & Raymond’s Movie Club
Thursday, Feb. 7, 7:30-9:30 p.m.
AV Department
Daily Herald film critic Dann Gire and award-winning author Raymond Benson present another installment in their series of film discussions.  This month’s topic – Oscar Picks.

Dann & Raymond’s Movie Club
Thursday, March 6, 7:30-9:30 p.m.
AV Department
Daily Herald film critic Dann Gire and award-winning author Raymond Benson present another installment in their series of film discussions.  This month’s topic – Watch the Skies - Science Fiction Films of the Silent Era through the 1950s.

Dann & Raymond’s Movie Club
Thursday, April 3, 7:30-9:30 p.m.
AV Department
Daily Herald film critic Dann Gire and award-winning author Raymond Benson present another installment in their series of film discussions.  This month’s topic – The Final Frontier - Science Fiction Films from the 1960s to the Present.

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Inside Writing and Publishing

For the third year, the Schaumburg Township District Library is participating in the multi-library cooperative program, Inside Writing and Publishing.  These free seminars, presented in March and April in cooperation with other libraries in the North Suburban Library System, offer people an opportunity to meet with authors to learn how to sharpen their writing skills and get their work published.  Brochures with all of the programs offered by all participating libraries will be available around the beginning of February.

The Secret to a Good Query Letter
Thursday, March 13 – 7-9 pm
Adult Classroom
Querying is a necessary evil in the publishing and writing world.  But, if you know the secret to catching an agent or publisher’s eye, the querying process is going to be a lot easier.  Join author Stacey Klemstein to get the tips and tricks for creating a stand-out query letter for your novel.  Writers will leave with a sample query letter, resources for further information, and a rough draft of their own query letter.

Creating an Effective Writing Group
Thursday, March 27 – 7:30-9 pm
Adult Classroom
Why do writers join writing groups?  What is expected of a group member?  How does a writer give (and take) criticism?  Lisa Rosenthal, editor of The Writing Group Book, presents a workshop on the nuts-and-bolts issues of sustaining an effective writing group.

20-20-20 – Dialog, Plot, Research
Tuesday, April 8 – 7-9 pm
Rasmussen South
Author Libby Fischer Hellmann (A Shot to Die For, Chicago Blues) will present basic guidelines for writing dialog, developing plot, and doing research.  Although the examples are geared to genre fiction, specifically crime fiction, every writer will find useful tips in this workshop.

Simon Jones’s resume could impress any producer - stage (on both London's West End and Broadway), screen (both large and small), national commercials, radio dramas, and audiobook narrations - he's done it all. 

During Jones' studies at Cambridge University, he was a member of the prestigious Cambridge Footlights Dramatics Club, the launching pad for major talents such as Jonathan Miller, Peter Cook, Emma Thompson, Hugh Laurie, and Stephen Fry, and several members who would later be part of the Monty Python players - John Cleese, Graham Chapman, and Eric Idle.  It was at Cambridge where he met author Douglas Adams, creator of the classic science-fiction adventure The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Adams admits that he wrote the series specifically with Jones in mind for the role of Arthur Dent, the young protagonist who travels the galaxy with his friend Ford Prefect.  Jones and Douglas remained friends until the author's death in 2001.

When the BBC first broadcast radio dramatizations of Hitchhiker in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Jones played Arthur Dent,   Doing the radio dramatizations gave him the experience of performing solely for the audience's ear.  "It made me appreciate conjuring up a picture," he said in an interview, "and leaving the listeners to fill in the gaps."  He also played Dent in a BBC television version of the same book.  And, after author Adams' death in 2001, Jones narrated Adams' final book, The Salmon of Doubt.

Jones prepares himself thoroughly for his recording sessions, typical of all the best readers.  "It’s impossible to do these things blind,” he says. “I think of the audience--a person on a long journey, perhaps. I want to make things very clear for him, so he’s not rewinding the tape and straining to make sense of what I’ve said. That’s dangerous when you’re doing seventy. I’ll have no car accidents on my conscience.”

Jones' major strength as a narrator is in his character voices and audiences hear that in his performances.  Each character has his/her own distinct voice, complete with unique tone and attitude.  “For each character, I try to find a good voice,” he says, “something that suggests a personal history.”  In a recording of Cornelia Funke’s The Thief Lord, Jones went so far as to give an interesting minor character a slight speech impediment. “I needed to make a group of urchins distinguishable from each other,” he says. “I tried a number of approaches and struck on the idea of giving this particular one a lisp. It worked quite well, I think.” Although she’d never conceived the character in that way, author Cornelia Funke was delighted with his innovation.

Like many of the best in his field, Simon listens to the work of other audiobook narrators and, when he does, he takes notes on how the narrators perform, noting tricks he might learn and pitfalls to be avoided.  “The sure sign of a bad performance,” Jones says, “is a telltale monotone that creeps in.  You have to keep a tight leash on that.  Every now and again, I like to say a word quite sharply to wake up the director, the engineer, and anyone else who’s listening.”

With over 50 audiobooks to his credit and an armful of Earphone Awards (awarded by AudioFile Magazine to truly exceptional presentations that excel in narrative voice, style, and vocal characterizations), Mr. Jones can be assured that many of us are listening.

Selected titles narrated by Mr. Jones:

On CD:

Imperium by Robert Harris
A Slight Trick of the Mind by Mitch Cullin
A Place of Hiding by Elizabeth George
French Lessons by Peter Mayle

On audiocassette:

Slaves of Obsession by Anne Perry
The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester
Come to Grief by Dick Francis
The Fist of God by Frederick Forsyth

Available as a downloadable audiobook (My Media Mall):

The Thief Lord by Cornelia Funke
The Bartimaeus Trilogy by Jonathan Stroud

Maybe one of your new year's resolutions is to sit down in 2008 and finish writing that novel that's running around in circles in your head.  That's a very admirable goal.  Unfortunately, more often than not, our inner critics respond with, "Well, where are you going to find the time?  You've got to..." and that little voice will proceed to list all the impediments to your goal.

To sit down and write a 75- to 100-thousand word novel is a daunting task, indeed.  And, if you think of your writing in those terms, you may think, "Well, I'll never have the time to complete something like that.  I've got too many things to do."

But, do you think you could sit down at your computer (or typewriter or pad of paper) and write one hundred words?  Just that - 100 words.  And, just in case you're wondering how much (or how little) that is, the first two paragraphs of this section total 115 words.  Now, when you look at it, that doesn't seem so hard, does it?  Hopefully, right now, you're saying to yourself, "I can do that."  And you can.

If you were to sit down every day and write just one hundred words, by the end of the year, you'd have over 36,000 words, or approximately 146 pages of a double-spaced manuscript.

Not all of us can devote eight hours a day to working on our novel - real life constantly interrupts in the form of your job, your family, and other responsibilities.  But if you can sit down and write 100 simple words, you can make the goal of finishing that novel a reality by taking small, well-paced steps.  So, with apologies to Confucius:  "A journey of a hundred-thousand word manuscript miles begins with simply 100 words." 

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WRITERS ON WRITING:  “Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day.  The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them.  Most people don't see any."  (Nebula and Hugo award-winning author Orson Scott Card)

Happy writing!

The Romans continued to observe the new year in late March, but their calendar was continually tampered with by various emperors so that the calendar soon became out of synchronization with the sun.  In order to set the calendar right, the Roman senate, in 153 BC, declared January 1 to be the beginning of the new year.  The month was named for Janus, the Roman god identified with all beginnings.  With two faces, Janus could back on past events and forward to the future.  Janus became the ancient symbol for resolution and many Romans looked for forgiveness from their enemies and also exchanged gifts before the beginning of each year.