Archives for October 2023

November brings celebrations for many cultures. Día de los Muertos is a Mexican and Latino celebration that is celebrated on Nov. 1 or Nov. 2 to honor the dead and welcome their spirits home for just one night. The day is meant to bring joy rather than sorrow as we remember our loved ones with fondness.

Smiley Library is pleased to welcome our community to help celebrate this tradition, which is over 3,000 years old. Join us Wednesday, November 1, for our third Annual Día de los Muertos community event. This year will consist of traditional crafts, dance, music, and food for families to enjoy together. From 11 a.m. until 2 p.m., Smiley Park, on the south side of the Library, will be adorned with families celebrating their departed loved ones by creating marigold flowers, sugar skulls for their ofrendas (offerings or, colloquially, altars), and a mini-ofrenda to take home.

We will also offer an evening program from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at The Contemporary Club, 173 S. Eureka St., Redlands, consisting of remarks by prominent members of our community, short speeches, a musical performance by a professional musician, and of course, Saint Mary’s Ballet Folklorico of Redlands.

Please visit our website or social media pages for more information:

www.akspl.org; Instagram: @AKSmileyPublicLibrary; and FaceBook: https://www.facebook.com/AKSmileyPublicLibraryRedlands

The season of holiday parties and celebrations has arrived! Halloween, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, and New Year’s Eve will be here before you know it. Whether you are hosting Thanksgiving dinner for the first time or you are looking for a new appetizer recipe to bring to the office holiday party, Smiley Library can provide you with lots of entertaining ideas, tips, and recipes for an enjoyable holiday season.

First-time and veteran holiday gathering hosts will appreciate the wise advice and practical information given in the form of flow charts, timelines, check lists, and menu ideas designed to ease those pre-party jitters. Turn to “Eatertainment” by Sebastien and Sheila Centner, “The Dinner Party Project” by Natasha Feldman, and “Company” by Amy Thielen so you can reap the benefits of their expertise and enjoy your own party.

The holidays are a traditional time to bring out tried and true family recipes. There are certain dishes that must be present, otherwise the meal isn’t complete. For Miranda Lambert’s family, they look forward to having Nonnie’s Thanksgiving dressing, sweet potato casserole, giblet gravy, and pumpkin spice coffee creamer. Miranda shares these family treasures and many more recipes plus family stories in her new book, “Y’all Eat Yet?”

Fun, creative, easy to eat, and perfectly portioned bites are a few of the ways to describe a platter of appetizers. “Brilliant Bites” by Maegan Brown presents an array of 75 festive finger foods suitable for your next gathering. Some of her holiday-themed appetizers include noodle wrapped mummy meatballs, colorful monster cookie balls, no-bake pumpkin pie bites, Thanksgiving cracker bites that resemble turkeys and cornucopias, and chocolaty midnight kiss cookie bites coated in sparkling sugar.

The spooky season is upon us once again! This time of year always calls for chills and thrills, and what do many of our favorite scary books and movies have in common? Many of them rely on science fiction to create a sense of dread. Movies like Alien, The Thing, and Us use science fiction’s ‘what if’ to create a sense of ‘okay, no thank you.’ Here are some new works taking up the charge of science fiction/horror to enjoy this fall.

In their debut work, The Scourge Between Stars, Ness Brown’s characters face-off with an alien horror. On their way back to Earth from a failed colony, the crew of the Calypso are on the brink of mutiny. The ship’s captain has disappeared, leaving his second-in-command and daughter, Jacklyn, in charge. And if a crew of starving people isn’t bad enough, the ship has been damaged so badly that they cannot see what is in their path so they are essentially hurtling blind through space. But all of those are minor in comparison to their biggest problem. There is something else on board with the crew. And it is very hungry. Jacklyn must fight to keep her crew alive and figure out how to navigate back home before it is too late.

David Wellington’s latest work Paradise-1, is not a trip to a pleasure planet as the title might entail. Special Agent Petrova has been sent there for a wellness check on humanity’s first deep space colony. Petrova, having spectacularly failed to show that her station was earned and not the result of nepotism, is sent there along with a disgraced and haunted Dr. Zhang and a recently reinstated pilot Sam. The three awaken at their arrival under attack by another ship from Paradise-1 and must fight for their lives against an enemy that fights in insidious new ways. Petrova must stay alive and complete her mission but how do you fight an enemy that infects your mind with a single thought?

Focusing on the issues of race, class, and prejudice, The World Wasn’t Ready for You by Justin C. Key is a collection of short stories that shows the darkness that lies at the heart of humanity. Key uses the many horror and science fiction tropes to explore the problems with society: a father who would do anything to leave prison and return to his family, even submit himself to horrific experiments, a child haunted by a doll after witnessing his brother’s death. Even a husband willing to cheat death to bring his wife back. Key manages to bring a new perspective to the genre and leaves readers with some new unsettling truths.

Enjoy these creepy, crawly creations, and Happy Halloween!