This Week's Staff Favorites: Volume 13

Odd Life of Timothy Green 
"A time and a season for everything" is the backdrop for this delightful family movie. Tim comes to a couple that is unable to have a child in the form of the characteristics they chose. It has lessons for us that remind us we only have our loved ones for a short time. Acorn's copy is on the New DVD shelf and more copies are available through SWAN.

-Darlene, Circulation 

Safe Haven by Nicholas Sparks

I seen the movie Safe Haven last week, however it is a bit different than the book for obvious reasons. Safe Haven is about a young woman named Katie who mysteriously appears in the small North Carolina town of Southport. Katie steals a deceased neighbor’s identity and decides to run away and start a new life. Katie tries avoiding personal relationships, because she is running from an abusive relationship with her detective husband. She lives in constant fear that he will find her. She finds a small cottage to live in and becomes friends with her neighbor Jo. While Katie is still nervous & terrified, she begins to let down her guard and starts a relationship with Jo’s widowed husband Alex. He is the father of two small children, which really become attached to Katie very quickly. Katie struggles with her past and secrets as she begins to fall in love and leave behind her former life. She realizes she has to risk everything to find her Safe Haven, Love.

-Becky, Youth Services

The Day My Brain Exploded by Ashok Rajamani
This surprisingly humorous memoir chronicles Rajamani's physical and mental recovery from a massive brain bleed at the age of twenty-five due to a malformation that was buried inside of him since birth. The book touches upon several subjects, among them his motley group therapy sessions, poignant family relationships, his not-so-glamorous career in PR before the incident, and what life was like growing up Indian American in a small, cookie cutter town in the Midwest. Though the sequence of events is at times erratic, with unfinished narratives begging to be resolved, the hurried pace, self-deprecating asides, and hilarious dialogues made this a book I quite literally did not put down from the moment I started reading. It is available through SWAN.

-Anna, Youth Services 

Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer
I started reading this book about a year ago when I started to embrace a vegetarian diet, and have read the rest in bits and pieces since then. This book dives into the belly of what vegetarianism is all about - the philosophy behind why some people embrace it. Foer carefully weaves facts about the meat industry with personal experiences that he’s had to bring together a beautiful exposition of vegetarianism - and then lets the reader come to his or her own conclusions. It’s a great book for anyone who wants to just know more about the subject and what really goes on in the meat/poultry/fish industries. The book is available on shelf at Acorn!

-Judy, Reference

Searching for Sugar Man
The Oscars are on Sunday, and Searching for Sugar Man is up for the Documentary Feature award. Two fans want to find out what happened to an enigmatic singer whose message of peace and love inspired South Africa during its darkest days of apartheid. Their hunt ends in Detroit, where the troubadour has carried on as a serene, soft-spoken construction worker. Though it could have dug a little deeper, Searching for Sugar Man is a rather sweet celebration of the power of music and the magic of life’s surprises. It's available from Acorn, and can be requested from SWAN.

-Megan, Reference

The Other Dream Team
The 1992 USA Men’s Basketball Team was known as the Dream Team because the lineup included Jordan, Bird, Magic, and Barkley. The Other Dream Team is the Lithuanian Men’s Basketball Team that included Sabonis, Kutinaitis, Chomičius , and Marčiulionis. The Lithuanians were formerly on the Soviet team that won the Gold at the 1988 Olympics. 1992 was there first National Olympics as a sovereign nation. The country did not have enough money to send the team to Barcelona so the Grateful Dead funded the team – and provided them awesome tie-dyed warm-ups. The documentary is an inspiring story of a post-Communist country told through the world of basketball.  Acorn's copy is located on the New DVD shelf.

-Mike, Reference

This Week's Staff Favorites: Volume 12

Slats Grobnik and Some Other Friends by Mike Royko:

I just finished Slats Grobnik and Some Other Friends by Mike Royko and I loved it. Royko wrote columns for the short-lived Chicago Daily News, the Chicago Sun-Times until Rupert Murdoch bought it, and finally for the Chicago Tribune. He was always the straight-shooting voice of the working class -- calling out politicians and voters alike. The fictional Slats Grobnik is Royko’s neighborhood Huck Finn and, through him, he lampoons city life. This collection of columns is laugh-out-loud funny. For a more serious read, we also have Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago.  If Royko were alive, I might consider reading the Tribune.

-Mike, Reference

Celeste and Jesse Forever:

Since it’s Valentine’s Day weekend, I’ve learned to embrace the cheesy rom-coms with the endings that are so predictable. But this time I embraced more of an untraditional rom-com that recently came out: Celeste and Jesse Forever. It’s the story about two people who were best friends growing up, got married, and through a series of unfortunately bad decisions get a divorce. The key is that Jesse and Celeste want to stay best friends but yet move on with their own lives, which proves to be very difficult.

There’s some raunchy comedy and drug references sprinkled in, but it takes a realistic point of view of a relationship. Jesse learns to grow up and Celeste acknowledges that she may not always be right. Plus, the soundtrack is amazing; Lily Allen, Freddie Scott, and a nifty tune by Sunny Levine (“No Other Plans”) capture the essence of the darker side of romance. If you don’t see it for the great cinematography or soundtrack, at least borrow it so you can see Chris Pine’s hilarious outtakes as a drunken vagrant - that in itself is definitely worth seeing! Celeste and Jesse Forever is available through SWAN.

-Judy, Reference

The Fall of the House of Dixie by Bruce Levine:

This is social history at its finest. The Fall of the House of Dixie uses meticulous research and incisive quotes from a variety of sources--including soldiers, slaves, abolitionists, impoverished whites, and the Confederate aristocracy--to provide an astonishing autopsy of life in the nineteenth century South before and after the Civil War. Levine, a professor at the University of Illinois, presents complex ideas and loaded topics with remarkable clarity. He's a wonderful interviewee as well, as exemplified by his appearance on NPR's Fresh Air. This book is owned by Acorn, and can be requested through SWAN or by contacting the Library.

-Megan, Reference

This Week's Staff Favorites: Volume 11

The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey
Richard III has been in the news as of late; researchers and forensic scientists have recently confirmed that the ruins located underneath a parking lot in Leicester were indeed that of the late Richard III, King of Great Britain. But who really was Richard III? Was he a tyrant and murderer, like how Shakespeare depicted him in the historical drama Richard III? Or was he just a misunderstood ruler, with the Tudor dynasty power hungry and itching for the crown? The Daughter of Time explores these ideas and more. In the book, Alan Grant, a police officer from Scotland Yard, is stuck in the hospital. When he sees a portrait of Richard III, he analyzes his face and believes that he is not the murderer everyone set him out to be. With the help of a researcher from the British Museum, the two men journey out to find what exactly RIchard III was like, and was there really proof of him killing his two nephews. It’s a great read for those who like detective stories and discovering the truth. The Daughter of Time is available through our online catalog SWAN.

-Judy, Reference  

The Americans, FX, Wednesdays at 9 PM Central
It's the early 80's in suburban Washington D.C. The US and the Soviet Union are embroiled in the Cold War.  Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys star as Elizabeth and Phillip Jennings, an attractive, charming and extremely ordinary married couple with two children.  Soon, we learn the couple is a pair of highly-trained undercover KGB spies who have been living in the US for decades.  Their children, their neighbors, nobody knows anything of their double lives. This show is only two episodes in, but I am hooked. Both Russell and Rhys are fantastic at playing complex characters who are torn between a conflicting sense of duty to their homeland, mission, children and each other.  I cannot wait to see where this series goes.  

 
-Jen, Youth Services
 

The Best of Youth by Michael Dahlie
Things you need to know about Michael Dahlie's The Best of Youth: It takes place in Brooklyn. It features a sensitive, but clueless 20-something who spends his free time writing short stories. There is a manic pixie dream girl who plays the viola in an all-girl band. What will surprise you about this novel: It's still a tremendous triumph of humor and imagination. While Dahlie's world might be too whimsical and unlikely (the main character's parents die in a freak boating accident leaving him $15 million and a successful actor chooses him to ghostwrite his young adult novel), the author effortlessly infuses the comedy-of-manners and aw-shucks character that constantly leaves socially inept, privileged Henry with the fuzzy end of the lollipop with something akin to sympathy. Even when I hated it, I loved it.

-Anna, Youth Services 

Mashups
 Like the proliferation of the pomegranate and high-quality television programs, mashups are one of the twenty-first century's great consolations. Mashup artists alter the instrumentation and vocals of existing tracks in order to combine two or more songs into one, and the most gifted succeed in creating soundscapes that are both astonishingly fresh and seamless. One standard-bearer is Danger Mouse's The Grey Album from 2004, which combines the Beatles' The White Album with Jay-Z's The Black Album. Some recent standouts are Scott Melker's Skeetwood Mac--a wondrous melange of Fleetwood Mac's Rumours and rappers like 2 Chainz and Yung Joc--and "Horizon," which features MYTHS, Grimes, and Majical Cloudz. 

-Megan, Reference

The Woman in the Dunes by Kobo Abe 
The novel, available through SWAN, begins with a Japanese entomologist hoping to discover a new beetle species in the remote sand dunes outside of his city. After he misses the last bus out of the village, he is offered a room in a woman’s home at the bottom of a dune. After descending to the home on a rope ladder that is pulled up after him and spending the night shoveling sand into buckets that the villagers lift out of the pit, he realizes that he is doomed to fight the onslaught of sand for the rest of his days. As the characters develop a relationship amid the struggle, an existential question question comes to mind--are we all just shoveling sand? 

-Mike, Reference  

This Week's Staff Favorites: Volume 10

Shakespeare Uncovered http://www.pbs.org/wnet/shakespeare-uncovered/

The Public Broadcasting Station has a special series occurring over the next few weeks called Shakespeare Uncovered. A popular actor that has taken on Shakespearean roles goes out to explore the popular culture behind certain plays, its history, and how it’s influenced our society as we know it. The first episode was hosted by Ethan Hawke and deconstructed the famous drama, Macbeth. Throughout Hawke explores several concepts of the play: how Macbeth is influenced by the supernatural witches, how ambition and “dark forces” take control of him, the role of the wife, and finally the death and disaster that take over in entirety. Scholars and actors are interviewed, a visit to the real Macbeth’s castle is taken, and the audience goes behind the scenes of the London Globe Theater’s production of the drama. It’s definitely an interesting series so far, especially for anyone wanting to know more about Shakespeare in general! The first episodes are available to watch online and the next two episodes appear tonight at 9pm on PBS.

-Judy, Reference

Gillian Flynn:

I just finished Gone Girl, and it really lived up to the hype. Amy and Nick Dunne were living a glittering dream--writing jobs, Brooklyn brownstone, Amy's trust fund--that was quickly and mercilessly liquidated by the Great Recession. Their marriage unravels when they move to Missouri to care for Nick's ailing parents, and Amy disappears on their fifth anniversary. It may sound like another episode of Law and Order, but Flynn's potent storytelling, spiky observations, and a delectable menagerie of unhinged characters elevate the book into an exercise in psychological jujutsu. I'm officially hooked on her writing, as I'm currently reading Dark Places and awaiting Sharp Objects from SWAN.

-Megan, Reference

The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate by Robert D. Kaplan

Kaplan’s new book (located on our new book shelf) explains his theory that cultures and politics are largely shaped by geography. He covers some interesting themes and offers intriguing ideas and opinions throughout. For example, attempted control of Middle Europe was fundamental in the campaign of the Nazis, the U.S.S.R., and continues today with the EU.  After he explains a few historical geopolitical theories, he outlines his own unique take on world affairs which are too hard to summarize here. I’m surprised by how much I’ve enjoyed the book considering that I don’t normally like his style of historical writing (i.e. determinism combined with vague imperialism). If you’re interested in international politics, history, or the game RISK, I’d recommend it because it is thought-provoking. 

-Mike, Reference

A Smile as Big as the Moon by Mike Kersjes

This inspiring story is about a special education teacher/ football coach who gets his students into Space Camp, even though normally it is only for gifted and talented students.  Kersjes presents his experience with honesty and humor.  He shows great persistence and determination in preparing his students for this incredible adventure in getting to Space Camp.  He believed in his students and taught them to believe in themselves, even when the world around them has belittled them for so long.  I would give this book two thumbs up! 
 
-Janice, Youth Services

"Favorite Super Bowl" party recipe:  Taco Dip

1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened

1 (16 ounce) container nonfat sour cream

1 (1.25 ounce) package taco seasoning mix

1/4 head iceberg lettuce - rinsed, dried, and shredded

1 cup shredded Cheddar cheese

3 chopped tomatoes

1 green bell pepper, chopped

1 (2.25 ounce) can black olives, drained

Directions

In a medium-sized mixing bowl, combine cream cheese, sour cream and taco seasoning. Spread this mixture in a 9-inch (or a little larger) round serving dish. Top the mixture with lettuce, Cheddar cheese, tomatoes, bell pepper and black olives.

-Janice, Youth Services