Ages 18+.
Blog Post
Travel Europe with Rick Steves
by anonymous
Rick Steves could be considered a travel guru. He publishes travel guides, hosts a travel show, and writes an online column about travel. He even runs a tour company! Benefit from his advice and check out the library’s collection of books and DVDs. In particular, look for the DVDs that collect his series from 2000-2007 on such regions as France, Austria, England, Eastern Europe, and more. So, whether you want to research your next overseas trip or experience the world vicariously, Rick Steves is entertaining and informative.
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #87
by muffy
Shortlisted for the Orange Prize, Chinese author Xiaolu Guo’s first novel written in English, A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers is at once sexy, sad and funny .
Zhuang ("Z"), a 23-year-old Chinese woman from rural China is in London enrolled in English classes. Loneliness and her attraction to a much older man at an artsy film soon make them live-in lovers. His bisexuality bothers her less than his vegetarian diet. It becomes clear to the readers that her ever-improving English does not help her understanding of western culture and gets her in some dangerous situations.
“Guo's U.S. debut ...(is)a compelling and moving tale of first love. An often-charming exploration of learning, love and loss.” ~ Kirkus Reviews
Xiaolu Guo was born in 1973. After graduating from the Beijing Film Academy, she published a number of books in China. Since 2002, she has been dividing her time between London and Beijing. She has written and directed award-winning documentaries including The Concrete Revolution; her first feature film, How Is Your Fish Today?, was screened at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival and won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2007 International Women’s Film Festival.
Blog Post
Football Saturday Activities For the Non-Enthusiast
by MarilynG
What do you do on a football Saturday in Ann Arbor when you’re not interested in the game? Find a book, a new CD or a hot DVD in our catalog a day or two before the game, put a hold on it, and have it sent to a library branch near your home. Then you don’t have to travel far from home through traffic to find something you too can enjoy.
Blog Post
Praise for local author's first book
by Maxine
Travis Holland's debut novel, The Archivist's Story traces the period of Pavel Dubrov's life when his job is to destroy books in Lubyanka prison where political prisoners are kept in the Stalinist Moscow of 1939. A former teacher of literature, Dubrov, in verifying an author for an unsigned work, discovers that the manuscript is two unpublished stories by Isaac Babel, one of his beloved authors. He steals the manuscript and hides it in a brick wall in his apartment basement. Although Russian society is breaking down during this tyrannical regime and Dubrov and his friends are filled with despair, his action provides some seed of hope for the future. A well-written and researched novel from this University of Michigan instructor.
Blog Post
The Living and the Dead
by anned
Beautiful zombie love. When a meteorite strikes a nearby graveyard and awakens the dead, the life of a lonely dishwasher will never be the same. Our hero never loses his cool and comes up with some innovative solutions to his problems. Norwegian cartoonist Jason tells his tales with anthropomorphic dogs, cats, and birds dressed in timeless fashions. The Living and the Dead is told simply in black and white pictures with onomatopoeia (there are only 5 dialogue panels). Mature themes with some zombie gore.
Blog Post
Space Opera
by RiponGood
I just finished the first book in the Saga of the Seven Suns series, Hidden Empire by Kevin J. Anderson yesterday. The story is full of twists and turns with a great cliffhanger ending. In the first book you're introduced to a wide ranging cast of characters from a variety of species spanning much of the Milkyway Galaxy. My only complaint with the story is it jumped around a lot and there was no real sense of how much time passed from beginning to end. Instead of reading the book, I listened to it. One of my favorite narrators reads the story, George Guidall. The audio version is available both on cassette and CD.
Blog Post
Graduation by Kanye West
by detra
Graduation is the third installment in Kanye West's "education" series. This CD is fresh and innovative (and even somewhat eclectic). If you like hip-hop music, you will love Graduation. In my opinion, it is the best hip-hop CD of 2007!
Blog Post
One of the "Merry Pranksters"
by Maxine
Ken Kesey, novelist known as one of the the Merry Pranksters was born on this day, September 17, 1935 in La Junta, Colorado. When he was a student at Stanford, he took part in a VA experiment which was his introduction to a psychedelic drug called LSD. The experience changed his life and he became fascinated with the concepts of sanity and insanity. He took a job as a night attendant at a psychiatric ward which inspired his most famous book, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest which later became a movie starring Jack Nicholson as the infamous McMurphy.
Kesey was an inspiration to a whole generation of counter-cultural activists with his famous bus tour on the "Further," the name of the Prankster's bus. This journey inspired Tom Wolfe to write The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Kesey's second novel, Sometimes a Great Notion about a lumberworkers'strike on the Oregon coast was probably of greater literary merit but not as successful as Cuckoo's Nest.
Blog Post
Robert Jordan (James Oliver Rigney, Jr) 1948 - 2007
by N3RD
Best known for his Wheel of time series Robert Jordan passed away on Sunday at the age of 58.
Since early 2006 friends and fans have followed his battle with cardiac amyloidosis on his fan blog.
Robert had the first book of the wheel of time “The Eye of the World” published in 1990 and fans have been following the adventures of Rand al'Thor, Matrim Cauthon and Perrin Aybara.
For over 15 years. Although knowing that his time was short Robert was confident that “A Memory of Light” the final book (12) in the wheel of time series would be finished. The status of “A Memory of Light” is at present unknown.
Blog Post
It Rhymes With Lust
by anned
And it's not a euphemism. It's Rust Masson. This voluptuous vixen has a lust for power that will destroy anyone who gets in her way. In 1950, Arnold Drake and Leslie Waller collaborated under the pen name Drake Waller to write what many consider to be the first graphic novel: It Rhymes With Lust. Their aim was to create a sophisticated, novel-length comic tailored to their peers. The result was pulpy noir masterfully done and advertised as Picture Novels . Matt Baker's illustrations are simply beautiful. Ray Osrin did some wonderful things with half-tones to show atmospheric perspective and to draw your attention to the main focus of the scene. Lucky for us that Dark Horse released this replica edition.