Category Archives: Readers Page

Read Charlotte Canelli’s column in the February 8, 2013 edition of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.

Note: This column was written before the 2nd Annual Volunteer Appreciation Tea. The event was postponed until Valentine’s Day, February 14, 2013. All sweets and appreciation will be the same as ‘advertised.’

On Friday, February 8 we are celebrating our volunteers at the Morrill Memorial Library. We’ve invited them to the 2nd Annual Volunteer Appreciation Tea where they will spend time with us between 10 am and 2 pm in the library’s Simoni Room.

Our first annual tea was such a success in 2012. It was also oh, so delicious. Library staff and trustees baked a plethora of sweets. There was a catch to the task, however. The recipe had to be from a cookbook available on our library shelves or through the Minuteman Library Network.
Each dessert was featured with the name of the cookbook, the recipe and the baker. Library staff was on hand throughout the day to greet and thank our volunteers personally.

Last year’s desserts included everything from cheesecake to macarons. (Yes, that’s macarons which are different from the traditional macaroons.)

This year’s selection for our volunteers rivals last year’s selection with plenty of new additions and variety. (more…)

Read Charlotte Canelli’s column in the February 1, 2013 edition of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.

I am a reader of memoirs. Many times I read them to see the world through another lens. Sometimes I read them to experience a life I’ve never lived. Most of them I find compelling and intriguing.

I’m certainly not the only one reading memoirs. The memoir genre has been increasing in popularity in the past twenty years. “Angela’s Ashes” (Frank McCourt 1996), “Under the Tuscan Sun” (Frances Mayes 1996), “A Walk in the Woods” (Bill Bryson, 1998), “Eat, Pray, Love” (Elizabeth Gilbert 2006) and “Three Cups of Tea” (Greg Mortenson 2006) are just a few of the blockbuster memoirs that still sell in hardcover and paperback and are checked out from libraries across the country.

This week four memoirs appeared on the nonfiction hardcover bestseller lists in the New York Times – “My Beloved World” by Sonia Sotomayor, “No Easy Day” by Mark Owen, “Wild” by Cheryl Strayed and “My Share of the Task” by Stanley McChrystal. In addition, “Proof of Heaven”, a memoir about a neurosurgeon’s near-death experience, tops the paperback non-fiction list this week. There are still hundreds of requests in the Minuteman Library System for the hardcover edition of “Proof of Heaven” and it was published months ago. (more…)

Read Charlotte Canelli’s column in the January 25, 2013 edition of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.

In 1964, a young Canadian director created a documentary for the British Broadcasting Corporation. Director Paul Almond assembled fourteen seven-year olds from differing socio-economic backgrounds from across England and created a forty-minute television program that aired on British television in 1964. In Seven Up!, Almond examined the lives and personalities of fourteen children, ten boys and four girls. The narrator states: “Why do we bring these children together? Because we want to get a glimpse of England in the year 2000.” The mission, it seemed, was to prove the Jesuit adage “Give me a child when he is seven and I will give you the man.”

It was the beginning of a fascinating sociological study that has now spanned nearly half a century. Seven Up! was followed in 1971 by 7 Plus 7. Subsequent episodes, filmed every seven years, were titled 21, 28, 35, 42, 49 and 56 Up.

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