The premise for this book of canine photography is simple, but the results that Mr. Casteel achieves are extraordinary. There are canines that look cute and cuddly on the surface, but when underwater the dogs really show their primal side, teeth bared and all. Sometimes they look downright absurd other times they look like monsters! The way the water manipulates the dogs’ movements and features is really spectacular. It’s definitely a fun book to look through.
This weekend I read the book The Vow by Kim and Krickitt Carpenter. It is a true story about love, pain, determination, healing, perseverance, and falling in love all over again. The story makes one think about keeping one’s marriage vow, no matter what. It makes one think about how much we take life for granted and how we can appreciate each moment and each memory with a loved one. That inspiration might be something to keep in mind especially this Christmas season. I recommend this quick read.
Acorn also owns the DVD The Vow based on the #1 best selling book (although I haven’t seen it, I can tell from the case Hollywood has made quite a few changes from the book’s storyline. Just be prepared to accept that.) Both the book and the film are available through SWAN.
This is the first of a quartet of historical murder mysteries from Polish author Mark Krajewski. The setting is the German city of Breslau (current-day Wrocław, Poland) in the summer of 1933. The murder of a local Baron’s daughter sparks an investigation by Criminal Director Eberhard Mock, a typical anti-hero familiar to fans of hardboiled crime novels. The tense setting, dark characters, and surprising conclusion made it a great read. Death in Breslau is available through SWAN.
I rarely listen to music through anything other than Soundcloud. I like it more than Pandora and Spotify because there are no commercials and I choose what music is played. You can stream, download, and upload all of your favorite music for free. The best part is that musicians upload their own music, so don’t feel like you are cheating them or pirating anything. Other perks are the time-specific comments, continous play, tags to improve browsing, and the wide selection of music. If you’re tired of commercials, try SoundCloud.
Reviewer: Jennifer
While avoiding holiday shopping last weekend I happened across Mean Girls on TV. I hadn’t seen the movie since it was released in 2004, and I was reminded of how smart, funny and relevant the movie is, as well as just how far Lindsay Lohan has fallen in the last 8 years. Lohan plays Cady, a naive home-schooled teenager who is abruptly thrust into the treacherous world that is high school. Cady has to learn to navigate social cliques and is eventually befriended by The Plastics, a group of the school’s most popular and exclusive girls. As expected, catty jealousy over a boy ensues. Superficially, the movie is a teen movie and all that normally goes along with that genre. What makes this movie better than average is Tina Fey’s screenplay influenced by the book Queen Bees and Wannabes and a talented cast including Fey, Amy Poehler, Amanda Seyfried, Neil Flynn, Tim Meadows, Rachel McAdams, and of course Lohan, pre-criminal record.
The music blog One Week // One Band makes good on Tumblr’s unique formatting to present a different band or artist each week written by music writers, fans, and professional critics. The posts are a mix of factual information, personal thoughts, pictures, videos, and quotes and range from popular artists to more obscure indie outfits. What makes this blog unlike many of its peers is the enthusiasm and honesty that pervades each piece: whether a writer divulges his or her own personal anecdote in connection to a song, admits an initial distaste for a musical genre, or simply rambles about what makes the artist so appealing, strange, lovely, wonderful, unique, or comforting, the posts retain the spirit of what makes music and music culture so fun to talk about.
You’re heard that Ben Affleck is the Next Great American Director, right? Well, now is the perfect time to dig into his oeuvre! Though he made a successful directorial debut with 2007’s Gone Baby Gone, he cemented his status as something decidedly other than Matt Damon’s smirky sidekick/J-Lo’s manicured yacht accessory with 2010’s The Town, a kinetic thriller about Boston’s notorious Charlestown bank robbers. I usually find action movies to be cliché-ridden blobs of bombast, but this one sharply captures each heist as an obstacle course of logistical ingenuity and acute emotion. The performances are uniformly strong–most notably Jeremy Renner as the mercurial, merciless Gem–and even the secondary characters (e.g. Jon Hamm’s manipulative FBI agent, Blake Lively’s misguided but loyal townie) are nuanced and intriguing.
This British Rolling Stone-acclaimed indie band’s second album, supposedly inspired by “club music”, has more of a haunting, chilling rhythm than the abnormal pulsating beat that you would find in standard club music nowadays. It’s simplistic – almost minimalist in style. But there’s experimentation almost everywhere and the use of steelpans and other unusual percussion instruments definitely give the music a softer edge.
Han Han is a novelist, the world’s most read blogger, a professional race car driver, and the source of much controversy in his native China–where he is criticized for both his frankness and self-interested circumspection. This book offers a glimpse into China’s complex dynamics of unprecedented change, censorship, promise, and corruption by way of Han’s pithy entries. This Generation can be found at Acorn and through SWAN, and his translated blog posts can be found here.
I’ve only had the chance to cook a few of the recipes from the book, but I’ve really enjoyed them. The authors were both born in Jerusalem (one in the Jewish West and one in the Arab East) and they offer recipes from each of the city’s ethnic groups including Iranian, Georgian, Palestinian and Sephardic Jews. The photographs of the food will make your stomach growl and the street scenes offer a glimpse of city life. Some of the ingredients are uncommon in the typical pantry, but once you try the dishes you’re sure to want them in your kitchen. Jerusalem: A Cookbook is available at Acorn and through SWAN. Leftovers are welcome!
Reviewer: Acorn Patrons
Didn’t finish reading it, but learned this: in 1950, a manufacturer in the USA could not take advantage of the laborer in say, India, for $0.60/hour, but instead had to pay $16.60/hour for a laborer here. Now, with the age of globalization and the transfer of capital abroad, the manufacturer can locate where the cheapest labor is.
Eventually, Ms. Freeland posits, working people world wide will earn the same wage. Earnings for workers in western democracies are lowering, and wages in Africa and Asia are rising. One day they will meet.
I think that the revelations in this book call for citizen diligence. After all, it was Congress that brought globalization to bear. Trevor Potter, a former chair of the Federal Elections Commission, told Bill Moyers recently that elected officials spend more and more of their time raising cash, and less and less time attending to the economy, war, international affairs, health and welfare of citizens, and all the myriad responsibilities of elected office.
Public financing of elections is the best way to remove the pernicious influence of lobbyists and corporate deep pockets, including ALEC (the American Legislative Exchange Council), that is responsible for state initiatives such as voter IDs, “stand-your-ground”, privatized prisons, chartered schools, concealed carry…
If we want Congress responsive to us, instead of to the corporation, send an email or letter to those in elected office, and make your desires known.
Bloomberg Businessweek is the happy marriage of the internet’s eclectic fizz and actual journalistic skill. The result is that the business world becomes a whimsical ride of surprise and intrigue. To wit, the current issue includes articles on the ways in which music benefits job performance, a new mind-reading app, the particulars of Argentina’s export shenanigans, and–alas–the entrepreneurial genius of Nickelback. It’s available online and at the Library.
