Like in his most recent work, At Home, travel and history writer Bill Bryson uses a loose premise to explore all of the quirky nooks and crannies of history with his trademark humor and insight. Bryson covers the more eventful happenings in the summer of 1927, like Charles Lindbergh's flight, the advent of flappers, and Babe Ruth's spectacular, record-breaking season, but also finds the strange bits of trivia that connect them. Did you know the Lindy Hop was originally called the Lindbergh Hop, coined after Lindbergh's fateful flight over the Atlantic?
What makes life worth living? Will Traynor is struggling with this very question since an accident left him paralyzed from the shoulders down and often in excruciating pain. Confined to a wheelchair and dependent on others to assist with even the most basic tasks of daily life, Will isn't sure life is worth living. Then his mother hires Louisa (Lou) Clark as his daytime assistant/caregiver. Two very different personalities, Will and Lou get off to a rocky and stilted start.
Parents: if you’re looking for a few hours of uninterrupted time to yourself, check out Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney--for your kid. NoveList, an online database the Library subscribes to, is a great resource for books. It lists the minimum reading level for this book at 2nd grade and the maximum reading level at 8th grade. I’d agree that’s about right. If you’ve got a 7-year-old Human Reading Vacuum, a 14-year-old reluctant reader, or anyone in between, it’s a good bet they
When seventeen-year-old Tana wakes up hungover from a wild party at a remote farmhouse, surrounded by dead classmates, she thinks things can't get any worse...until she discovers a mysterious vampire named Gavriel chained up in the same room as her bitten ex-boyfriend Aiden, who is about to turn into a full-fledged bloodsucker at any moment.
Almost seven score and ten years ago on November 19th, the National Cemetery in Gettysburg, PA was dedicated to those Union soldiers who fought and died during the three day battle there. It was at this event that President Abraham Lincoln gave perhaps his most well-known speech of his political career: the Gettysburg Address. At less than 280 words long, it is a speech that many Americans have had to memorize at one time or another in the years since.
David Rothenberg's Bug Music is a highly readable and eccentric investigation into an aspect of nature too easily taken for granted. Bugs produce very mathematical sounds based on natural cycles. What human ears are able to delineate is really only the tip of a very large iceberg connected to other icebergs. Delving deeply into the sounds of cicadas, crickets and katydids, Rothenberg is not afraid to suddenly go big-picture on his readers. He aims for nothing less than a direct connection between a cricket’s chirp and jazz band’s rhythm section.
When This Is Spinal Tap was released in theaters in 1984, many audience members were convinced they were seeing a documentary of an actual British rock group, Spinal Tap, fumbling its way through one last tour across America despite the fact they hadn’t had a hit song in nearly two decades. In reality, the film is a mockumentary directed by the great Rob Reiner, and Spinal Tap is a fake band made up of three brilliant American actors. Christopher Guest, who went on to direct and star in other hilarious mockumentaries such as Waiting for
Claire and Chris Canton are living the quintessential suburban life in Johnson County Kansas when the recession hits and Chris gets laid off from his job. With a generous severance package Chris is sure that he will be able to find a job with no problem. However, as the months go on with no job prospects in sight Chris retreats both physically and emotionally from Claire, their two kids and life in general. Meanwhile, Claire is left to keep things going the way they always have to minimize the impact on their children, Josh and Jordan, while working part time from hom
I need to confess that I gave up reading this book. I thought it was because my science knowledge was so abysmal and this theory was bolstered by numerous reviewers praising Kean for his accessible writing. But I kept having these niggling thoughts that it wasn't all my fault. And in my defense I do like science writing. Each year I devour The Best American Science Writing. This series gets me excited about science which is what science books for the lay person should do. Kean was just too disjointed for me.
In Elizabeth Gilbert’s latest work of fiction, Alma Whittaker is born in 1800 to her parents, Henry and Beatrix, who are themselves interesting characters. Henry grew up poor and very resentful of this fact, although his father did teach him the one thing that changed his life, which was botany. Henry is a self-made man and is now one of the wealthiest men in America. Both he and Beatrix are very unconventional parents. Scientific in nature, they encourage their daughter to explore their large estate—as long as she is doing something to further her intellect.
