Tag: leap year

Leap Day / Leap Year items

- Beth Leave a comment

You would think with Leap Day coming only every four years, there would be more stories revolving around the rare event. I could only come up with four titles in our catalog. (Descriptions provided by publisher.)

Lucky Leap Day by Ann Marie Walker — During a whirlwind trip to Ireland, after one too many whiskeys, fledgling screenwriter Cara Kennedy gets caught up in the Irish tradition of women proposing on Leap Day. She wakes up the next morning with a hot guy in her bed and a tin foil ring. With a flight back to LA in four hours, the best thing they can do is figure things out along the way. In LA Finn Maguire spends the nights charming his new bride– and his days going on auditions. Is their marriage the real deal– or was he just after her Hollywood connections?

 

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Leap Year (DVD) – This movie from 2010 introduced me to the Irish tradition that allows women to propose to men on Leap Day. Anna (played by Amy Adams) follows Jeremy to Dublin to propose to him. But after landing on the wrong side of Ireland, she must enlist the help of Declan, a handsome and carefree local man, to get her across the country. Along the way, they discover that the road to love can take you to very unexpected places.

 

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Leap Day by Wendy Mass – This Young Adult novel features a heroine Josie on her fourth Leap birthday, when she turns sixteen. Josie has a number of momentous experiences, including taking her driver’s test, auditioning for a school play, and celebrating with her family and friends.

 

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A Different Dawn by Isabella Maldonado — When the FBI’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program database detects two murder incidents “staged to look like double murder suicides,” FBI special agent Nina Guerrera investigates, in Maldonado’s captivating sequel to 2020’s The Cipher. The most recent occurred in Phoenix, Ariz., and the previous one happened four years before in Manhattan, both on February 29. FBI agents soon discover the existence of eight similar crimes at four-year intervals, all involving young couples with an infant or newborn child. As the agents get closer to finding commonalities among the murders and in particular the significance of leap day, things get personal for Nina as she uncovers clues to the crimes related to her entry into the foster system as a child. (Publishers Weekly review, 06/28/2021)

A Movie for Leap Year

- Lynn Leave a comment

February 29th will be here before we know it! Yay, we need more February, right?

The Proposal  doesn’t actually take place in a leap year as far as I know, but Sandra Bullock’s character, Maggie, does follow that holiday’s tradition of a woman proposing to a man.

The ruthless Maggie, in order to avoid deportation, forces her subordinate, (Ryan Reynolds), to marry her. Hilarity ensues when they visit the groom’s  family in Alaska. As is mandatory, Betty White plays a grandmother prone to mildly offensive insults and truth telling.

Alaska, Bullock and Reynolds are enjoyable to behold. You could do worse than pop this into the dvd player on your extra day of 2012.

4 Fun Facts About Leap Year

- Ann 1 Comment

Leap Year is February 29Of all the months of the year to add a day to, why did they pick February? I would have voted for May or June or maybe September, but February? Someone needs to pay for this….

In the meantime, here are some fun Leap Year Day facts:

1. People who are born on February 29 are sometimes called Leaplings. They celebrate their birthday on either February 28 or March 1 (there’s no hard and fast rule on that) on non-leap day years.

2. An extra day is added every four years to balance the calendar. Contrary to what you learned in school, a year is not 365 days long; it is 365.24219 days long. The Julian calendar (we’re using the Gregorian calendar now) did not adjust for this difference and the calendar got out of sync with the seasons. Now an extra day is added (again, why February?!) every four years except for century years that are not exactly divisible by 400 (got that?)

3. In some cultures Leap Year Day is the day that women may propose marriage to a man, or it is the day that women can ask a man on a date. In America, it is sometimes the occasion to hold a Sadie Hawkins dance, named for a character in the Lil’ Abner comic strip who was looking for a husband.

4. It’s called a “leap year” because the extra day means that a calendar date (such as your birthday) which falls on consecutive days of the weeks during non-leap years, will skip a weekday this year thus “leaping” over a day. For instance, if your birthday fell on a Monday last year, this year it will fall on a Wednesday rather than a Tuesday (clear as mud, right?)

You can find more fun calendar facts like this for every day of the week in Chase’s Calendar of Events. Ask for it at the Reference desk.