The Mountain Between Us by Charles Martin:
Charles Martin's The Mountain Between Us is a novel about two plane crash survivors. The strong character development, substance, and truly satisfying ending make this book a standout. Plus, it's touching without being sappy.
-Dawn, Circulation
Scrooged:
Probably one of my favorite versions of the classic Dickens' holiday tale. Bill Murray portrays a cutthroat television executive who learns to eventually see past his own jadedness and the materialization of Christmas, and learns to love from the bottom of his heart. It's classic Bill Murray humor; Carol Kane portrays a particularly hilarious Ghost of Christmas Present (with a tutu and tiara to boot!) Available at Acorn and through SWAN.
-Judy, Reference
Soundcloud.com:
I rarely listen to music through anything other than Soundcloud. I like it more than Pandora and Spotify because there are no commercials and I choose what music is played. You can stream, download, and upload all of your favorite music for free. The best part is that musicians upload their own music, so don’t feel like you are cheating them or pirating anything. Other perks are the time-specific comments, continous play, tags to improve browsing, and the wide selection of music. If you’re tired of commercials, try SoundCloud.
-Mike, Reference
Mean Girls:
While avoiding holiday shopping last weekend I happened across Mean Girls on TV. I hadn't seen the movie since it was released in 2004, and I was reminded of how smart, funny and relevant the movie is, as well as just how far Lindsay Lohan has fallen in the last 8 years. Lohan plays Cady, a naive home-schooled teenager who is abruptly thrust into the treacherous world that is high school. Cady has to learn to navigate social cliques and is eventually befriended by The Plastics, a group of the school's most popular and exclusive girls. As expected, catty jealousy over a boy ensues. Superficially, the movie is a teen movie and all that normally goes along with that genre. What makes this movie better than average is Tina Fey's screenplay influenced by the book Queen Bees and Wannabes and a talented cast including Fey, Amy Poehler, Amanda Seyfried, Neil Flynn, Tim Meadows, Rachel McAdams, and of course Lohan, pre-criminal record.
-Jennifer, Youth Services
One Week// One Band:
The music blog One Week // One Band makes good on Tumblr's unique formatting to present a different band or artist each week written by music writers, fans, and professional critics. The posts are a mix of factual information, personal thoughts, pictures, videos, and quotes and range from popular artists to more obscure indie outfits. What makes this blog unlike many of its peers is the enthusiasm and honesty that pervades each piece: whether a writer divulges his or her own personal anecdote in connection to a song, admits an initial distaste for a musical genre, or simply rambles about what makes the artist so appealing, strange, lovely, wonderful, unique, or comforting, the posts retain the spirit of what makes music and music culture so fun to talk about.
-Anna, Youth Services
The Town:
You're heard that Ben Affleck is the Next Great American Director, right? Well, now is the perfect time to dig into his oeuvre! Though he made a successful directorial debut with 2007's Gone Baby Gone, he cemented his status as something decidedly other than Matt Damon's smirky sidekick/J-Lo's manicured yacht accessory with 2010's The Town, a kinetic thriller about Boston's notorious Charlestown bank robbers. I usually find action movies to be cliché-ridden blobs of bombast, but this one sharply captures each heist as an obstacle course of logistical ingenuity and acute emotion. The performances are uniformly strong--most notably Jeremy Renner as the mercurial, merciless Gem--and even the secondary characters (e.g. Jon Hamm's manipulative FBI agent, Blake Lively's misguided but loyal townie) are nuanced and intriguing.
-Megan, Reference
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