Algonquin Area Public Library notes

To register or for information, call the Algonquin Area Public Library at (847) 658-6060 or visit Web site aapld.org.

For adults

New Books: Let the New Book Section of the Algonquin Area Public Library help you sort out what happens when different cultures bump or merge.

• Editor Cecil Kuhne's "Wish You Weren't Here" is an uproarious collection of 21 traveling tales designed to keep you laughing about people, transportation and trip plans run amuck on journeys around the world.

• If you dream of a villa in Italy and wonderful food to enjoy with new friends, you might dream of "Living in a Foreign Language" by Michael Tucker. Readers will learn about the culture of actors, Umbria, California and people who want to slow the speed of their lives in Tucker's book.

• Combine the story of immigrant Russian Jews, Depression survivors and New York hoarders and you might begin to understand "Dough: A Memoir" by Mort Zachter. You will be amused, charmed, confused and touched by this family's mysterious secrets and receive Zachter's most important gift, the knowledge that a lack of communication between different generations of any family creates the most profound form of culture confusion.

• The world of science, philosophy and the arts was made richer by Islamic culture but these gifts have been forgotten by the Western world. While not a comprehensive study of this "Lost History," Michael Hamilton Morgan offers readers an opportunity to recapture this knowledge.

• If a passion for archaeology beats within your heart, seek out Nancy Marie Brown's "Far Traveler: Voyages Of A Viking Woman." This is a factual presentation of Viking travel from Vinland to Rome but you may find you feel the sea wind, smell the scent of far-off lands and hear sailors recounting the sagas while reading its pages.

• The maritime heritage of the Great Lakes flourished from the Civil War to the early 1900s but most of us know only the fanciful story of the "Lives and Legends Of The Christmas Tree Ship." Author Fred Neuschell recounts the details of everyday life aboard ship, the communities dependent upon the schooners and the crew & captains who braved the lakes for a living.

• Take a darker voyage into a commercial venture practiced by British and American slave traders in Marcus Rediker's "Slave Ship: A Human History." Learning about the cargo, the crew, captains and ships is uncomfortable, well researched and fraught with great brutality and sorrow.

• Exploitation of the oceans didn't begin with the Industrial Revolution according to Callum Roberts' "Unnatural History Of The Sea." This history of fishing practices also will help us learn what we can do to remedy the situation.