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Would you like to learn more about email? Do you have troubles using your email account? There's room for you at a beginning email class here at the Ann Arbor District Library.

Tuesday June 30 from 10 - 12 Pittsfield
Wednesday July 1 from 1 - 3 pm Downtown
Wednesday July 1 from 3:30 - 5:30 pm Pittsfield
Thursday July 2 from 1 - 3 pm Malletts Creek

There are three ways to register:
Login to your online account and register here
Visit any AADL location
Call 734-327-4555

Computer classes are free and open to the public.

Don't miss the University of Michigan symposium on Friday, May 15th: "Bookishness: The New Fate of Reading in the Digital Age", an event co-sponsored by the Michigan Quarterly Review and Rackham Graduate School.

Speakers:
Paul Courant / Alan Liu / Phil Pochada / Jessica Pressman / Leah Price / Sam Tanenhaus

This event is free and open to the public.
Location: 3222 Angell Hall
9:30 - 10:00: Coffee and Refreshments
10:00 - 12:00: Panel on New Reading Practices and Literacies in a Digital Age
2:00 - 4:00: Forum on New Institutions for the Digital Age

May 15th is also the first day of the Ann Arbor Book Festival.

Pulp Tree

Michael Moore will be at the Michigan Theater today to talk a bit then premiere his latest film "Slacker Uprising". The film is about Moore's tour of the US during the 2004 presidential campaign.

Doors open at 4 p.m. Film at 6:20. Admission is free.

UM has a new video service called CARMA - Campus Automated Rich Media Archiving. CARMA captures lectures, events, presentations, and workshops and posts them online for public or private use. The CARMA website features some fun sample lectures. CARMA started in response to the ATLAS project need to share infomation across continents and later on sparked MScribe which captures video with a robotic camera.

Do you ever want to measure how much electricity something uses? With an energy meter you can find out just how much electricity your appliances are using. Simply plug the appliance or device into the meter, plug the meter into an outlet and then read the display. Sounds handy, doesn’t it? If this is of interest to you, the AADL has energy meters that you can check out for home use.

Hear Julie Orringer read from her short story collection, How to Breathe Underwater, a New York Times Notable Book and the winner of the Northern California Book Award. Julie is the Helen Herzog Zell Visiting Professor at the University of Michigan.

On those days when you’re trying to figure out how the adult world works wouldn’t it be great to have an 800-pound gorilla on your side? Cadet Robin Plotnik, is about to get just that. He is assigned to work with mechanic Mac Gimbensky, for whom fixing space fighters is a passion and an art. Mac’s “creative” work style has chased off many a cadet but Robin manages to survive his first day as Mac’s grease monkey. In no time the two become good friends.

Together, this unlikely duo maintains the fighter craft for the all-women Barbarian Squadron, which constantly competes against other fighter jocks. Full of adventure, romance, and humor Grease Monkey will engage you to the last page.

On the 198th birth of Edgar Allan Poe the 2007 Edgar® Nominees were announced. The winner will be announced April 26 in NYC. Read the list and tell us which one you think should be named the winner.

The Road of the Dead by Kevin Brooks

The Christopher Killer by Alane Ferguson

Crunch Time by Mariah Fredericks

Buried by Robin Merrow MacCready

The Night My Sister Went Missing by Carol Plum-Ucci

The first graphic novel to win the Printz Award is American Born Chinese by Gene Yang. Announced today in Seattle, the 2007 Printz Award winner “focuses on three characters in tales that touch on facets of Chinese American life. Jin is a boy faced with the casual racism of fellow students and the pressure of his crush on a Caucasian girl; the Monkey King, a character from Chinese folklore, has attained great power but feels he is being held back because of what the gods perceive as his lowly status; and Danny, a popular high-school student, suffers through an annual visit from his cousin Chin-Kee, a walking, talking compendium of exaggerated Chinese stereotypes.” (Booklist review)

Printz Honor books are:

Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation: Taken From Accounts by his Own Hand and Other Sundry Sources by M.T. Anderson
Abundance of Katherines by John Greene
Surrender by Sonya Hartnett
The Book Thief by Markus Zuzak

Iggy gets kicked out of high school and there’s no one at home for him to tell. His mother has been gone for days, his father is stoned on the couch and the phone’s been disconnected, so even his social worker can’t get through.

Walking away from his public housing, Iggy sets out to make something of his life. Not an easy task when he has no skills and his only friend is mixed up with the dealer who got his mom hooked.

Iggy’s got problems galore, but Iggy also has the kind of wisdom that lets him see what no one else can. Try Saint Iggy.