I didn’t expect to enjoy Pitch Perfect, but I did. Beca is a freshman in college and she has no interest in college life. She’d rather be in the real world DJing and producing music. Her father is a professor at the school and makes a deal with her that if she is in college for a year and joins a club and hates it, she gets to drop out and he’ll pay her way to LA to make music.

Enter the Barden Bellas. The Bellas are an all girls a cappella group that take on their rival male singing group, and surprisingly, talented outsider Beca is able to add some life to their stale routines, which creates tension between her and the group's leader who isn't into changing up.

The film is quite funny with the singing cast offering many one liners. Watching the cast members create and perform the musical routines is pretty entertaining.

Are you interested in films in other languages but just don’t know where to start? It can seem daunting to pick a movie to watch when it’s not in your native language. With “A Separation” in Persian, you can be sure of a great viewing experience. It won an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 2011 as well as awards from the Fajr Film Festival, the Berlin International Film Festival, the Golden Globes, the New York Film Critics Circle, and many more.

“A Separation”, a film by renowned director Asghar Farhadi, is a gripping drama about two families torn apart by love, fear, and lies. It begins with the debate of a married couple, Simin and Nader, who argue over bringing their daughter to Europe for a better life. They decide their only choice is divorce, because Nader needs to stay behind to care for his aging father with Alzheimer’s disease. Once a maid is hired to help care for the father, everything begins to fall apart.

Experience this great movie by checking it out on Blu-Ray or DVD from the AADL! You may also want to view Asghar Farhadi’s other great films, including “Fireworks Wednesday,” and “Low Heights.” Please note: "A Separation" offers subtitles in English and French, and presents some mature topics that are not suitable for children.

In Aria Beth Sloss's Autobiography of Us, the ending is never in doubt, being spelled out right in the first sentence. And it draws you in, hook, line, and sinker - into a story of friendship, loss and love, between two women.

In the patrician neighborhood of Pasadena, California during the 1960s, Rebecca Madden and her beautiful, reckless friend Alex dream of lives beyond their mothers' narrow expectations. Since that day when Alex Carrington first walked into the classroom and picked quiet Rebecca as her friend, they have been everything to each other - that is until one sweltering evening the summer before their last year of college, when a single act of betrayal changed everything. Decades later, Rebecca's haunting meditation on the past reveals the truth about that night, the years that followed, and the friendship that shaped her.

"Autobiography of Us is an achingly beautiful portrait of a decades-long bond. A rare and powerful glimpse into the lives of two women caught between repression and revolution, it casts new light on the sacrifices, struggles, victories and defeats of a generation".

Aria Beth Sloss is a graduate of Yale University and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She is a recipient of fellowships from the Iowa Arts Foundation. This is her debut novel.

Readers might also enjoy the forthcoming by Meg Wolitzer - The Interestings (2013), "a dazzling, panoramic novel about what becomes of early talent, and the roles that art, money, and even envy can play in close friendships".

Take an emotional roller coaster ride with Ellen Forney, author and illustrator of Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo, & Me: a graphic memoir. Meet Ellen in a manic period of life learning of her diagnosis of bipolar disorder. Follow her as she first attempts to deal with her mania without meds, and then with meds. For five years Ellen valiantly struggles as she works with her psychiatrist to achieve a balance without sacrificing her creative self. Woven in with Ellen's story you'll find information about the different levels of bipolar disorder, the creative people who have suffered from the disorder, and the array of medications patients may take in order to strike an emotional balance.

The drawings are cartoony in style but so expressive of Ellen during both the manic and depressive times of her life. In one part of the story the only thing you see on each page is a tiny Ellen lying on her side wrapped in a blanket. The pages with this image go on and on relentlessly. You want it to end because you hate the hopeless feeling those images portray, just a tiny fraction of what Ellen is enduring. Marbles is a remarkable book that won’t be easy to read or to put down.

When Kirkus Reviews called a novel "an outstanding debut", you take notice.

Truth in Advertising* * * by John Kenney is "wickedly funny, honest, at times sardonic, and ultimately moving story about the absurdity of corporate life, the complications of love, and the meaning of family".

Christmas is just around the corner. Madison Avenue ad-man Finbar Dolan is forced to cancel a much anticipated vacation in order to write/produce a commercial for his diaper account in time for the Super Bowl. Closing in on 40 and having recently called off a wedding, he is a bit of a mess and doesn't quite know it.

Unfortunately (or fortunately as it turns out...) things get worse. His long-estranged and once-abusive father is dying and reluctantly, Fin returns to his Boston root and comes face to face with a traumatized childhood he tries hard to forget.

"With wry wit, excellent pacing, and pitch-perfect, often hilarious dialog, New Yorker humorist and former advertising copywrite Kenney (website) has created something remarkable: a surprisingly funny novel about an adult American male finally becoming a man.

"(A) comic tour de force; for fans of Nick Hornby and Jonathan Tropper" and those who enjoyed the Mad Men series.

* * *= starred reviews

The Ann Arbor District Library is proud to be a part of the upcoming Michigan Institute for Clinical & Health Research 2013 Community Engagement Symposium, taking place Tuesday, March 19, 2013 from 8:00 AM to 4:30 PM. All events take place at the University of Michigan's North Campus Research Complex.

The purpose of MICHR's Annual Community Engagement Symposium is to enhance collaboration between researchers and community-based, nonprofit, and governmental organizations interested or engaged in clinical and health research. Academic and community partners will have opportunities to network, share their research and experience, and develop skills to become engaged and effective partners.

This theme of this year’s symposium The Power of Partnerships: Improving Research and Health Outcomes will focus on the importance of community involvement and leadership in the research process and how both communities and researchers benefit from partnership approaches. This event is FREE and open to the public with registration. For all the details, and to register, visit the event website.

The University of Michigan Health System will offer free Pap screenings on Saturday March 23 at the Briarwood building 2 U-M Briarwood Center for Women, Children, & Young Adults, Suite B, 400 E. Eisenhower Pkwy. Appointments are necessary and can be made by calling the U-M Cancer Answer Line at 800-865-1125.The U-M Health System Cervical Cancer Screening Project will serve women over 21 who have not had a Pap test in the last three years and do not have health insurance that covers Pap tests. For more resources about cancer take a look at our compilation of select sites for health.

Just about this time each year, with the first hint of spring, I've found myself humming April in Paris, and thoughts tend to drift to the City of Light. Now debut novelist Hilary Reyl will take us there, through the painterly eyes of a young American artist, in Lessons in French.

1989, a time of social and political upheaval. Her fluent French got new Yale grad Kate hired by famous American photojournalist Lydia Schell as her assistant. Kate is thrilled with the chance to pursue her dreams as a painter, but also to return to France where, as a child she was sent to live with cousins while her father was dying.

Immediately she is dazzled by the Schell's fashionable Sixth Arrondissement home, frequented by their famous friends, and falls into the orbit of a band of independently wealthy young men with royal lineage. Impressionable and wanting badly to fit in, Kate deliberately engages in a forbidden romance, becoming deeply enmeshed in the drama of this volatile household, and the ever-more questionable requests they make of her. In the meantime, Kate struggles with her own art.

"In compelling and sympathetic prose, Hilary Reyl perfectly captures this portrait of a precocious, ambitious young woman struggling to define herself in a vibrant world that spirals out of her control. Lessons in French is at once a love letter to Paris and the story of a young woman finding herself, her moral compass, and, finally, her true family".

French literature scholar (Ph.D. NYU) Reyl's first novel is rich and magnetic. Will appeal to readers who enjoy novels of Americans in Paris and other coming-of-age stories.

A current resident of Ann Arbor has a story to tell about her remarkable survival during a period of tremendous upheaval and bloodshed a lifetime ago and an ocean away. Miriam Garvil's autobiography "I Have To Survive: Miriam's Story" is available on Amazon and is the culmination of twenty years' worth of work. Ninety-two year old Garvil, who resides in an assisted living facility in Ann Arbor, began writing with the encouragement of social worker Ruth Campbell, who continued to assist Garvil's work even after retiring herself.

"I Have To Survive" reveals the author's past growing up in Poland before the outbreak of the Second World War, and recounts her memories of the concentration camps Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. She lost her mother, father and sister in the camps, and recalls her promise to her father: "If you don't survive, I will survive for you".

You can find more information on Miriam Garvil and her story in this month's issue of the Ann Arbor Observer.

Professional cellist Edward Kelsey Moore, whose short story "Grandma and the Elusive Fifth Crucifix" was selected as an audience favorite on NPR's Stories on Stage series just published his first novel. He lives in Chicago (website).

I sincerely hope you are not expecting The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat * being Florence Ballard, Mary Wilson, and Diana Ross, - the sensation from Detroit's Brewster-Douglass public housing project that helped put Motown Records on the map in the 1960s. But seriously, you won't be too disappointed once you've met Odette, Clarice, and Barbara Jean.

Dubbed "The Supremes" since their high school days, these Plainsview (IN) mavens have weathered life's storms together arm-in-arm. Dutiful, proud, and talented Clarice must struggle to keep up appearances as she deals with her husband's infidelities. Beautiful, fragile Barbara Jean must try to live with a youthful mistake that continues to haunt her. Fearless Odette engages in the most terrifying battle of her life while entertaining visitations from her (dead) pot-smoking mother and an inebriated Eleanor Roosevelt. For four decades, what sustain these strong, funny women through marriages, children, happiness, and disappointments, is their Sunday table at Earl's Diner, the first black-own business in this racially divided town, where they can count on good food, gossip, occasional tears, uproarious banter and each other.

"With wit and love, style and sublime talent, Edward Kelsey Moore brings together four intertwined love stories, three devoted allies, and two sprightly earthbound spirits in a big-hearted debut novel that embraces the lives of people you will never forget."

Poised to give Waiting to Exhale, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood and Steel Magnolias a run for their money. Readers might also enjoy works by Pearl Cleage, and April Sinclair, or other novels on women's friendship.

* = starred review