A Series Of (Un)Fortunate Reviews

By now you know I love all things Jane Austen.  And I also enjoy a good horror movie.   So it's really no surprise that I wanted to see this horror mash up, Pride + Prejudice + Zombies , an adaptation of the book of the same title by Seth Grahame-Smith.  I have not read the book, but I borrowed it from the library and have it at home.  However, having seen the movie, I'm not sure that I will read the book.  I spent the first hour or so of the movie debating whether or not I really wanted to watch the whole movie, and then I got to the end of the movie was thisclose to declaring it bullshit because, well, I'll get to that issue in a moment. The simplest way to summarize this movie's plot is to say that it is Pride and Prejudice with a zombie apocalypse happening in the middle of Regency England.  And the humans appear to be losing the war thanks to the arrival of the zombie Anti-Christ (?) [or something; I didn't really understand that part]...

Miss Shayne is starting off the series with her picks for 2015.  Read on to see what she picked for her 'best of' for the year! Books Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi: Miss Shayne says she loved the strong, female lead character who starts with nothing and works to get to a powerful position.  Miss Shayne also liked the journal that the lead character kept throughout this beautifully written book. The Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson Miss Shayne recommends this good ghost story that stars a girl who's relatable.  The girl has to make new friends to solve a murder mystery. Movie : Jurassic World Music  1000 Forms of Fear (album) by Sia Sale el Sol (album) by Shakira Minutes to Midnight (album) by Linkin Park What Miss Shayne is looking forward to in 2016 : Sia's new album, This Is Acting Shakira's next new release, rumored to be in 2016

Throughout the month of January I'm sharing our staff picks of reads, movies, and websites that we enjoyed over the past year.  This is the second installment of the series.  To read the first installment, please click here to read about Miss Sheila's picks.  Today I'll share Timothy's picks for 2014.  Timothy is one of our assistants here at the library where he works part-time while attending college. Favorite books from 2014 (listed in no particular order): The Story of a Macaron-loving Girl Who Lived a Thousand Years Somehow by Karate Everything Is Going To Kill Everybody: The Terrifyingly Real Ways The World Wants You Dead by Robert Brockway Jam by Yahtzee Croshaw Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened by Allie Brosh Favorite movies from 2014 : Guardians of the Galaxy Puella Magi Madoka Magica: The Rebellion Story Timothy enjoys seeing what other people are read...

We're kicking off 2015 with a new series here on the blog!  Throughout the month of January, I will be sharing our Staff Picks of 2014.  This is the first part of a multi-part series in which library staff will share their favorite books, movies and/or literary websites or blogs from the previous year.  We're starting off with Miss Sheila's picks for 2014.  So keep on reading to find out what Miss Sheila's been reading over the past year! Although she has read many books during 2014, Miss Sheila is hard pressed to name her favorite novel.  That’s because all the books she enjoyed throughout the year fell into the nonfiction category.  Oddly enough, her favorite topic to read about is ... physics.   “The discoveries being made daily in the science of physics, as well as the discoveries made during the last one hundred years or so are nothing short of  fascinating”, Miss Sheila tells us.  “The ideas and theories brought together by t...

The Life Before Her Eyes is adapted from a novel of the same title by Laura Kasischke and stars Uma Thurman, Evan Rachel Wood, and Eva Amurri. Diana and Maureen are best friends coming of age in a small town when a fellow classmate comes to school with a gun and massacres untold numbers of students and teachers. What transpires leading up to that day, in the midst of the confrontation between the gunman and his victims, and in the aftermath of the tragedy is told from the perspective of one of the friends while she continues to deal with the effects of the tragedy during the fifteenth anniversary observance of the incident. Ultimately the viewer must question whether we are indeed witnessing one woman's long delayed emotional and mental breakdown in response to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder as a result of an extremely traumatic tragedy or are we witnessing something else entirely? This movie is both haunting and disturbing; the cinematography captures beautiful imagery. It is ...