The Price is Right

the price is rightCome on down! When I’m sick, I find myself binge-watching daytime television. Bob Barker’s voice haunts my sickness dreams telling me that I’m the next contestant on The Price is Right! Even though Mr. Barker is no longer the host, I still find myself watching the show as Drew Carey leads contestants through all the classic games in order to win the showcase.

Since my dream to be on The Price is Right has never materialized(Dangit!), I have found other ways to compete with my family and friends to win bragging rights. One of these is the Wii game, The Price is Right. Here I can live out my fantasy of being on the show and compete on Contestant’s Row against my friends to try to get to that treasured Showcase round. Fans of the old and new version of the show will recognize a wide variety of the games: Bonkers, Plinko, Punch a Bunch, Hole in One, Contestant Row, Grocery Game, Lucky Seven and many more. Over thirty classic pricing games are available to be played.

Gather up your friends and see which one of you is the best at guessing the closest price!

New CD’s for April

Mumford & Sons — Wilder Mind

Features twelve new tracks, written collaboratively by the band in London, Brooklyn, and Texas. This release marks a significant departure for the young British band from their previous two records. There is a minimalist yet panoramic feel to this new album.

 

The Plain White T’s — American Nights

After five years Plain White T’s, the band behind the hit Hey There Delilah, return with a brand new studio album. The first single, Pause, made its debut on Alternative Press’s website.

 

darius ruckerDarius Rucker — Southern Style

CMA and three-time Grammy Award winner Darius Rucker returns with his sixth solo studio album, which is the anticipated follow-up to 2013’s True Believers. Among the tracks is the new hit single Homegrown Honey.

 

Three Days Grace — Human

Ontario rockers Three Days Grace release their fifth studio album, which is the first to feature new lead singer Matt Walst. The album also includes the single I Am Machine, which has already become a hit on the rock charts.

 

Van Morrison — Duets: Re-Working the Catalogue

Van Morrison releases the 35th album of his storied career. Here he has re-recorded some of his favorite songs with the help of fellow artists including Michael Buble, Mavis Staples, and his own daughter Shana Morrison.

 

Brian Wilson — No Pier Pressure

One of popular music’s most deeply revered figures returns with his eleventh solo studio album. Joining him here are some of his former Beach Boys bandmates as well as Kacey Musgraves, fun.’s Nate Ruess, and more.

 

Zac Brown Band — Jekyll + Hyde

The fifth studio album from Zac Brown band features sixteen songs, including Heavy Is the Head with Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell and a collaboration with Sara Bareilles.

AsapSCIENCE: Answers to the World’s Weirdest Questions, Most Persistent Rumors & Unexplained Phenomena

asap scienceGrowing up, I was always curious about anything and everything and I still am. As a result, my poor parents, and really any adult who happened to be near me, were often subjected to my numerous questions: Why is the sky blue? Is cracking my fingers really bad for me or do you just find it annoying? Are my eyeballs really going to pop out of my head if I sneeze with my eyelids open? And many many more questions…

Now that I’m an adult, I find myself on the receiving end of those questions every day as well as having questions of my own. How do I answer these questions? Well, I look them up either online or in books. One of my favorite places to look for answers when I don’t have books nearby is a YouTube Channel called AsapSCIENCE. (They also have another channel called AsapTHOUGHT where they add a social conscience twist to science.) On the AsapScience channel, Mitchell Moffit and Gregory Brown have made hundreds of YouTube videos about a wide variety of science subjects.

As I was walking the new shelves, I discovered that Moffit and Brown had come out with a book called AsapSCIENCE: Answers to the World’s Weirdest Questions, Most Persistent Rumors & Unexplained Phenomena that goes into more detail than their YouTube channel does on certain popular questions, rumors, and unexplained things that are populating our everyday lives. Filled with illustrations as well as easy to understand definitions of difficult terms, Moffit and Brown tackle the important questions: What are eye boogers? How can I cure my hangover? Is binge watching tv really bad for me? Crack open this book to answer those burning questions about the 5 second rule, what would happen if you stopped sleeping, and even if the zombie apocalypse could really happen. They even have the answers to my blue sky, cracking fingers, and sneezing questions!

Have more questions that this book doesn’t answer? Come visit the library and our reference librarians can help you find the answers.

New Mad Men Landmark

mad-men-statue
Actor Jon Hamm sits on the Don Draper Bench in front of the Time-Life Building in New York City. The silhouette of Hamm is used in the opening credits of the show Mad Men.

Are you a fan of the TV show Mad Men?  Are you travelling to New York City this summer?  Then you will want to head to 1271 Avenue of the Americas in Rockefeller Center, home of the Time-Life Building which houses the fictional Sterling Cooper & Partners office.  Outside of the building is a new Mad Men fixture called, The Draper Bench and a street sign that says Mad Men Ave and Don Draper Way.  The second half of season 7 premieres on Sunday, April 5th on AMC.  If you have not watched Mad Men, the library owns seasons 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and part one of the last season of the show.

If you need other ideas on things to do and see while you are in New York City, the library has different travel guides available for checkout.  Frommer’s Easy Guide to New York CityExplore New York and Lonely Planet’s New York City are a few examples of travel guides you may be interested in.

 

 

 

Breaking News: Library Collections Threatened by Insect Invasion

A newly discovered insect genus, liber vermis, is threatening library collections across the globe. This pest, which comes in various shapes and sizes, voraciously consumes books in large quantities, devastating carefully managed collections within a matter of days. Difficult to identify and nearly impossible to stop once it has begun attacking, the library world has been forced to take drastic action, beginning immediately.

Interim Library Director Amy Groskopf assures the public that Davenport Library will not give up without a fight. “Libraries have long been the repository of human thought. The potential loss could change the course of history. We must remain calm and united”.

Sadly, liber vermis has been detected near the Davenport Public Library and we are asking you, our loyal patrons, for your support during this difficult and potentially catastrophic crisis. Everyone will now be required to walk through a bleach spray bath (fairly low health risk) before entering the library. All patrons will be required to wear a face mask and disposable gloves (available for a small fee at the Customer Service desk)

Books and magazines can no longer leave the facility. Glass viewing boxes have been installed at all three Davenport libraries; the 12 most popular titles (as determined by our librarians) will be shown each month, with the pages turned once every hour. There will be no “turn backs” for slow readers or missed pages – you will need to wait for the next time the book is shown.

If you think that ebooks will save you, think again. Although it is still not clear exactly how the liber vermis destroys books, scientists believe they attack the actual word, not the material of the book. In fact, ebook words are far more vulnerable, and one infected book can wipe out an entire ebook collection within minutes!

The best way for you to fight this invasion is to memorize your favorite books. Then you can read and review them in the privacy of your own head as frequently as you wish, safe from invading liber vermis. Good luck.

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APRIL FOOL! Haha! There is no such insect called liber vermis (very badly translated Latin for book worm!) and, at least at this writing, there is no need for bleach baths or disposable gloves. Also, you are still free to touch and choose any book you would like to take home (provided you have a valid library card of course!).

This fake story was beginning to sound a little bit of a cross between George Orwell’s 1984 and Jasper Ford’s Thursday Next series wasn’t it?! It does help make you appreciate the great freedom we enjoy, to read what we want, when we want and to maintain free thought. That’s what libraries have always done best – open doors for everyone, no matter your education, interests or beliefs, there is a place for you at the library (again, so long as you are polite to all and bring back your library books!)

Happy April Fool’s Day!

I Could Pee on This

i could pee on thisI have a dilemma. I think cats are adorable, but I’m allergic, so I can never own one. I get my cat fix by visiting my friends who own cats, where I’m forced to admire them from afar and not get too close. Let me tell you something that I’ve noticed: cats are WEIRD. Don’t get me wrong, I admit cats are significantly smarter than my dogs, but I can never be 100% sure what exactly is going on in any cat’s head.

Enter in I Could Pee on This: And Other Poems by Cats. This book has become my go-to manual for figuring out what that tabby cat is thinking as it stares me down from the corner of the room. Ever wondered how they feel about catnip, laser pointers, traveling, or even that new fuzzy kitten you brought home? Let the cats tell you all about it. The next time you decide to try to sleep in, are wondering what happened to your curtains or couch, or are even curious about why your cat seems to change his mind so quickly, turn to this book to gain a humorous understanding of why cats behave the way they do(and then maybe swing by the pet store on your way home and pick up some catnip and a brand new toy – they’re not opposed to bribery).

Parenting: Illustrated with Crappy Pictures

Parenting: Illustrated with Crappy Pictures is a book put together by Amber Dusick. The idea for this book came about when she was looking for a way to vent about her frustrations and joys of being a parent. As a result, her blog, Illustrated with Crappy Pictures, was born and morphed to include anything and everything that she needed to vent about in her life, not just parenting. It became so popular that she decided to turn her blog posts into a book. She just came out with one about marriage as well. Go Amber!

Dusick describes her family throughout her book as Crappy Baby, Crappy Boy, and Crappy Husband, though she stresses multiple times that none of them are in fact crappy, JUST her drawings! Since she wanted to tell people about the things that happened in her day-to-day life, she figured drawing crappy pictures, the only kind that she can draw, to go along with her stories would help illustrate her frustration.

Parenting: Illustrated with Crappy Pictures is broken up into ten different chapters, each detailing one major part of parenting that Dusick and other parents can completely relate to, from the difference in your life before and after kids, how to deal with sickness in your house, remembering the good stuff about being a parent, and also what she calls the “50 Crappy Laws of Parenting”.

Follow Dusick as she regales you with stories about how you just can’t get your kids to BE QUIET while on a road trip especially on a plane, how family dinner time is never actually family dinner since that would require everyone to sit at the table at the same time, and just how much you should treasure sleep because babies, for some reason, do not sleep at all!

The Bro Code

bro codeAre you a fan of the hit CBS show, How I Met Your Mother, which ended last March? If so, you might be familiar with The Bro Code that Barney Stinson lives by. The Bro Code has a deep and righteous place of holiness within Barney’s life. Some people live by a code of morals, some by a guardian angel, some by religion or the Constitution, but Barney instead runs his life by a code of awesome.

Lucky for fans of the show, Barney Stinson and Matt Kuhn came out with a book version of The Bro Code. Barney is very clear, both on the television show and in the introduction to this book, that these are “rules for social decorum” that determine how bros should live their lives. For those confused about the show, who Barney is, and what exactly is a bro, Barney has you covered. He breaks down all the necessary details in the introduction, the origin story of the bro code, his section on just what is “the bro” and the subsequent glossary in the back of the book. The articles of the bro code range from the simple (Article 1: Bros before hos) to the complex (how to pick a good wingman and how to maneuver the Hot/Crazy scale).

People looking for a good laugh and fans of the show will enjoy this book.

A Bollywood Affair

a bollywood affairLet me tell you about one of my favorite places in the library: the new shelves. The new shelves are the first place I look whenever I go into any library. They let me see what reading mood I am in before I decide to trek through the whole library, since I can never come into a library and leave in less than an hour… When I’m pressed for time, I wander the new shelves because I’m bound to find something, usually more than one something, that I want to read.

My latest new shelf discovery was A Bollywood Affair by Sonali Dev. In this fiction romance, Dev has woven a classic story of love, loyalty, and confusion. Mili Rathod was promised and married to her husband when she was 4 years old and hasn’t seen him since. For years, she waited for her husband to come back and rescue her. When he never shows up, Mili takes it upon herself to go to America to get an education, so she can become a more perfect modern bride. Enter in Samir Rathod, a famous Bollywood director, who just happens to be Mili’s brother-in-law. After an accident has injured his brother, Samir is sent to Michigan to convince Mili to sign the divorce papers. This should be easy, right? WRONG. Enter in last-name confusion, accidents, Samir’s writer’s block, and Mili’s crazy roommate’s love story, and readers are guaranteed to be hooked into this story and rooting for Mili to finally get her happily ever after.

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