In preparing for Halloween, I’ll revisit a CNN poll on scary books. A few years back, CNN Interactive conducted an informal survey to determine what respondents felt were the scariest books of all time. In no particular order, the results were:

• Dracula by Bram Stoker
• The Shining by Stephen King
• The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty
• The short stories of Edgar Allan Poe
• The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

Special mention should go to The Exorcist, the inspiration for the American Film Institute’s 3rd most thrilling American film.

My personal favorite for most creepy book is Neil Gaiman’s Coraline, about a girl who ventures through a mysterious door into a world that is similar, yet disturbingly different from her own, where she must challenge a gruesome entity in order to save herself, her parents, and the souls of three others. Not exactly the feel-good read of the season.

Happy Halloween!

I just finished unpacking some boxes of new books for the library. Among the new arrivals:

- New Moon by Stephenie Meyer, the long-awaited sequel to Twilight. (For more about the author, read the 10 Second Interview: A Few Words with Stephenie Meyer at Amazon.com. You can also visit her website at StephenieMeyer.com).

- Specials by Scott Westerfeld. Book 3 in the trilogy which starts with Uglies and Pretties. For more on the series, visit Scott Westerfeld’s website.

- Ark Angel, the latest Alex Rider book from Anthony Horowitz. For more on the series, visit the Alex Rider website.

That’s just a few…there’s plenty more in the new book section at the Academy Library!

Canandaigua Academy students and faculty recently hosted the Rachel’s Challenge presentation. Rachel Scott was the first person killed at Columbine High School in 1999. Her compassion and acts of kindness are remembered and are the basis for the program that seeks to eliminate prejudice, encourage kindness and develop a community of caring. If you would like to learn more about the program, visit the Rachel’s Challenge website. We also have many other resources about Rachel in the Academy Library, including her diaries, The Journals of Rachel Scott.

Do you have a lot of books? Or are you interested in what other people think about the books you’ve read? Take a look at LibraryThing, a free service that helps people catalog their personal libraries and connect with others who have similar reading interests. From LibraryThing: “You can access your catalog from anywhere. Because everyone catalogs together, LibraryThing also connects people with the same books, comes up with suggestions for what to read next, and so forth.” Registration is free, or feel free to use the search function without registering.

You may have heard that the founders of YouTube will make millions with the sale of the popular video site to Google for $1.65 billion. But did you know that one of those founders, a student at Stanford University, also hit it big in 2002, when another venture he was involved in, PayPal, was sold to eBay for $1.5 billion? Read more here: With YouTube, Student Hits Jackpot Again