Here is a new DVD list highlighting various titles recently added to the library’s collection.
“My Brilliant Friend” Season 1 Website / Reviews Based on the bestselling Neapolitan novel series by author Elena Ferrante. When the most important friend in her life seems to have disappeared without a trace, Elena Greco, a now-elderly woman immersed in a house full of books, turns on her computer and starts writing the story of their friendship. “Bumblebee” Website / Reviews
Charlie Watson, a teenager trying to find her place in the world, discovers and repairs a battle-scarred robot named Bumblebee, who’s disguised as a Volkswagen Beetle. As the Decepticons hunt down the surviving Autobots with the help of a secret agency led by Agent Burns, the transformer and Charlie team up to protect the world in an action-packed adventure that’s fun for the whole family. Continue reading “New DVD List: My Brilliant Friend & More”
Life can be a lot sometimes. Simply being a human comes with so many responsibilities, stressors, and heartache that it can be hard to process. There are many tried and true habits for maintaining good mental health such as exercising, meditating, and getting enough sleep, but there is one that often goes overlooked.
Time and time again, behavioral health experts have reported that journaling can help people cope with anxiety, stress, and depression. What makes journaling so effective? It gives you a chance to process your emotions and put your thoughts and feelings on paper. Like Dumbledore’s Pensieve, you get to pull the troubling thoughts out of your head and set them somewhere else. You get to be creative without fear of scrutiny. Continue reading “The Therapeutic Effects of Journaling”
Before there was “tourism” and souvenir ashtrays became “kitsch,” the Lake of the Ozarks was a Shangri-La for middle-class Midwestern families on vacation. It was there that author Bill Geist spent summers in the Sixties during his school and college years working at Arrowhead Lodge. What may have seemed just a summer job became, upon reflection, a transformative era where a cast of eccentric, small-town characters and experiences shaped (some might suggest “slightly twisted”) Bill into the man he is today. In “Lake of the Ozarks,” Emmy Award-winning CBS Sunday Morning Correspondent Bill Geist reflects on his coming of age in the American Heartland and traces his evolution as a man and a writer. Continue reading “Nonfiction Roundup: May 2019”
April showers bring May flowers and an abundance of exciting new books by debut fiction authors. There are so many interesting titles being published this month that it was difficult to choose which ones to highlight, so make sure you visit our catalog to see all the ones I couldn’t fit into this post.
All of London is abuzz with the scandalous case of Frannie Langton, accused of the brutal double murder of her employers, renowned scientist George Benham and his eccentric French wife, Marguerite. Crowds pack the courtroom, eagerly following every twist, while the newspapers print lurid theories about the killings and the mysterious woman being tried at the Old Bailey.
The testimonies against Frannie are damning. She is a seductress, a witch, a master manipulator, a whore.
But Frannie claims she cannot recall what happened that fateful evening, even if remembering could save her life. She doesn’t know how she came to be covered in the victims’ blood. But she does have a tale to tell: a story of her childhood on a Jamaican plantation, her apprenticeship under a debauched scientist who stretched all bounds of ethics, and the events that brought her into the Benhams’ London home—and into a passionate and forbidden relationship.
Though her testimony may seal her conviction, the truth will unmask the perpetrators of crimes far beyond murder and indict the whole of English society itself. Continue reading “Debut Author Spotlight: May 2019”
Space. What’s out there, and is there any end to it? Is there life on other planets? These questions have driven many developments in science, and led to the creation of lot of fantastic literature. Which makes it a snap to meet the 2019’s Read Harder challenge number six, a book by an author of color set in or about space.
Margo Lee Shetterley’s 2016 nonfiction book, “Hidden Figures,” shows us that behind every successful space launch is a bevy of smart, hard-working Black women performing the mathematical calculations to make it possible. If you’ve only seen the movie, I recommend reading the book as well. It provides many more layers to the stories of the women’s lives.
In the realm of science fiction, “The Three-Body Problem” by Liu Cixin won the Hugo, the Nebula, and several other literary awards. The story begins in the 1960s, during China’s Cultural Revolution, and moves decades into the future. Translator Ken Liu provides a few short footnotes to help western readers understand the cultural context. Even without additional explanations, it’s easy enough to grasp the premise of the book. How would humans, individually and as a society, react to news of alien creatures on their way to colonize our planet? Continue reading “Read Harder 2019: A Book by an Author of Color Set in or About Space”
It is a truth universally acknowledged in book-loving communities that if you don’t like to read, you haven’t found the right books. With so much out there – romance, mysteries, short stories, cookbooks, self-improvement, etc. – there really is something for everybody. Even devout lovers of the written word, however, sometimes shy away from poetry. The distaste for poetry reaches as far back as Socrates, and the notion of saccharine sing-songy rhymes and cliche metaphors for love and loss deter many readers. Poetry comes in so many styles, though, that if you don’t like poetry, you probably haven’t found the right poet. Whatever your taste, chances are there is a collection of poetry whose tone, content, and style mimic that of your favorite prose. In honor of National Poetry Month, here are some poetry and prose pairings to match you with your new favorite bard.
If you like “Wuthering Heights,” you may like the poetry of Sylvia Plath. The intensity, passion, pain, and jagged beauty resemble the tumultuous romance and rugged moors of Emily Bronte’s imagination.
“I didn’t want any flowers, I only wanted / To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty. / How free it is, you have no idea how free – / The peacefulness, so big it dazes you, / And it asks nothing, a name tag, a few trinkets. / It is what the dead close on, finally; I imagine them / Shutting their mouths on it, like a Communion tablet.” – “Tulips” from “Ariel.”
In honor of Earth Month,* please allow me to pay tribute to the humble bicycle. There are many reasons to love bikes. Here is a far-from-exhaustive list of reasons to love bikes.
They are a low impact way (easy on the ligaments and whatnot) of burning calories and building muscle.
They are great for the environment. (CO2 emissions from a gallon of gasoline: 8,887 grams CO2/ gallon. The average passenger vehicle emits about 404 grams of CO2 per mile.)
While providing much of the same fun as a horse or mule (wind in your hair, the sensation of speed) you need never share your oats with a bike.
“More bikes and trams, leave the car at home – Earth Relay for Climate Action Brunswick” Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0)
When the weather is beautiful, you get to enjoy it. When the weather is bad, you get to be smug about how tough you are for biking anyway.
When you go on a long ride, you have to eat a lot in order to maintain the energy required to power your bike. It’s a glorious thing to be REQUIRED to eat a few thousand extra calories in a day, and still be fitter than you were when the day started.
When people wish you a “Happy Earth Day,” you can respond, graciously, with “Each and every single day is Earth Day to me,” and then gesture emphatically at your bike, or, should your bike not be in your line of sight, pantomime riding a bike.
You’ll enjoy the friendly nods you’ll exchange with people who appreciate your biking even if they are unable or unwilling to do the same.
They are great for our roads. (Despite the frustrations felt by many motorists when they are forced to slow down for upwards of a few seconds while in proximity to a cyclist, bikes ease traffic and cause nearly no wear on our roads when compared to a motor vehicle.) While I understand it is natural to be frustrated when you must decrease your speed and delay your arrival by several seconds, please only pass bikers when you can give them at least a three-foot buffer. This may mean waiting until the other lane has cleared and you can cross into it. The biker will be grateful, and you will have made the world a better place even while contributing to the decline of the atmosphere :).
*”Earth Month!” the reader exclaims incredulously, I imagine. But, yes, allow me to enumerate the reasons:
As I said, as a devoted biker and someone who always makes sure to get every last drop of food or beverage out of its container, every day is Earth Day to me.
In a few decades, when the descendants of the absurdly wealthy are living in an artificial atmosphere on Mars or the moon or deep inside the earth’s crust, they are likely to dedicate a whole month to remembering their home planet. They will celebrate with, respectively, Mars bars and Moonpies and pie crusts. They will bemoan their forebearers’ greed and shortsightedness. They will long for the developed ecosystems and prevalent housepets their ancestors had access to. “Oh, sweet Earth,” they’ll wail, cuddling their robot for comfort, “if only dear grandpappy had cared more about sustaining livable conditions on your surface rather than hoarding wealth, perhaps now we’d be enjoying diverse fauna and domesticated animals.”
Posted on Wednesday, April 24, 2019 by Decimal Diver
Filming at night has always been problematic for directors since cameras capture scenes best in the daytime with ample light. In spite of this some directors have excelled at filming night settings, using various techniques and equipment to overcome the limitations of darkness. Check out these docs that were primarily filmed at night:
In this lyrical portrait, three adolescent brothers take us on a lively journey through one immersive night in New Orleans, encountering a vibrant kaleidoscope of dancers, musicians, hustlers, and revelers. The filmmakers fully immerse us into the New Orleans night, introducing us to the people who make the city their home. Continue reading “Shot in the Dark: Docs That Were Filmed at Night”
Posted on Monday, April 22, 2019 by Reading Addict
Oliver Griebl [CC BY 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)]Spring has sprung and I’m getting itchy! Yes, I do have allergies, but that’s not what I mean. I’m feeling drawn to the woods. I want to be hiking. I want to smell the trees. I want to hug a tree! I have poetry in my heart!
I have been trying to get out there but I just haven’t managed it. It seems that whenever I get the chance it’s raining! So I will have to delve into the world of trees through books until I can satiate this longing. I could take a “Walk in the Woods” with Bill Bryson or walk the “Wild” with Cheryl Strayed. I have been on those treks before and love them both! But maybe it’s time to go on “Grandma Gatewood’s Walk” or get out “On Trails” with Robert Moor. Continue reading “For the Love of TREES!”
I picked up “The Bus on Thursday” by Shirley Barrett because the cover has a disembodied hand on it. It’s creepy and striking, much like disembodied hands are when they don’t appear on book covers. After reading the first sentence (“I was at work scratching my armpit.”), I knew I’d have to read the whole book. Would the scratching alleviate or aggravate the itch in her pit? These are the sort of hooks novelists spend their lives searching for.
Immediately, subsequent sentences turn the outcome of the itch into a triviality: she’d discovered a lump, and it was cancer. Soon after being told she won’t be able to have kids until her late 30s, her best friend announces her own pregnancy on social media with a particularly annoying post. Eleanor decides to move from the big city and take a teaching job in small, cute, and creepy town. She’s replacing a beloved teacher who recently disappeared, and she can move into the teacher’s former home, complete with thirty plus locks on the door, immediately. Between the missing teacher and the preponderance of locks on her door, the reader may venture to assume something strange is afoot. Continue reading “The Gentleman Recommends: Shirley Barrett”
“My Brilliant Friend”
“Bumblebee”
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