If You Like The Fault In Our Stars...

If you're like some of us here at the library - huge John Green fans - you'll already know that the film adaptation of one of his biggest titles, The Fault in Our Stars, hits theaters June 6. If you're also like us, you've probably read every single John Green title on the shelf. If you're waiting for the film and looking for something similar to tide you over in the meantime, we've got you covered! Here are a few titles you might like too:

Eleanor & Park
by Rainbow Rowell

Eleanor is the new girl on the bus, and with her wild red hair and unique wardrobe, she can't help but stand out. Park's the quiet guy who just wants to blend in. Set over the course of one school year in 1986, this is the story of two star-crossed misfits - smart enough to know that first love almost never lasts, but brave and desperate enough to try.

Wonder
by R.J. Palacio

Ten-year-old Auggie Pullman, who was born with extreme facial abnormalities and was not expected to survive, goes from being home-schooled to entering fifth grade at a private middle school in Manhattan, which entails enduring the taunting and fear of his classmates as he struggles to be seen as just another student.

Butter
by Erin Jode Longe

Unable to control his binge eating, a morbidly obese teenager nicknamed Butter decides to make live webcast of his last meal as he attempts to eat himself to death.
 

Winger
by Andrew Smith

Two years younger than his classmates at a prestigious boarding school, fourteen-year-old Ryan Dean West grapples with living in the dorm for troublemakers, falling for his female best friend who thinks of him as just a kid, and playing wing on the Varsity rugby team with some of his frightening new dorm-mates.

The Spectacular Now
by Tim Tharp

In the last months of high school, charismatic eighteen-year-old Sutter Keely lives in the present, staying drunk or high most of the time, but that could change when he starts working to boost the self-confidence of a classmate, Aimee.

Wintergirls
by Laurie Halse Anderson

Eighteen-year-old Lia comes to terms with her best friend's death from anorexia as she struggles with the same disorder.

Where Things Come Back
by John Corey Whaley

Seventeen-year-old Cullen's summer in Lily, Arkansas, is marked by his cousin's death by overdose, an alleged spotting of a woodpecker thought to be extinct, failed romances, and his younger brother's sudden disappearance.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower
by Stephen Chbosky

A coming of age novel about Charlie, a freshman in high school who is a wallflower, shy and introspective, and very intelligent. He deals with the usual teen problems, but also with the suicide of his best friend.





If you'd like to check out any of these books, just click on the title to be taken to the book in our online catalog. You can place a hold by using your library card number and PIN.

All book descriptions taken from our catalog or Worldcat.org.

Staff Pick: Frontier Magic Trilogy

Thirteenth Child, Across the Great Barrier and The Far West comprise the Frontier Magic Trilogy by Patricia C. Wrede. I read Thirteenth Child back in 2009 and enjoyed the story of Eff the unlucky 13th child and her twin brother. Lan is the seventh son of a seventh son who is expected to be magically gifted and more powerful than the average magician. Eff learns to fit in, in this fantasy story set in an alternate, historical, magical America.

Then a couple of months ago, I picked up the new book, Across the Great Barrier and realized it was book two. I read right through Eff's adventures with her magic. She spends more time in the new frontier on the other side of the Great Barrier Spell. This spell protects the more populated areas from the uncharted territories with dangerous magical creatures, such as saber cats, steam dragons and medusa lizards.

The third book, The Far West takes the twins even further west as they join the expedition that is headed on beyond the Great Barrier Spell. They plan to map the unexplored territory and discover new types of magical plants and wildlife. Eff is learning more about her magic as she matures into a young woman who suddenly finds herself with a young man who wants to marry her, but she is not about to give up her freedom to do just as she pleases.

This series kept me entertained as Eff and her family encountered many adventures and she learns that being the thirteenth child has many meanings, but unlucky was just not her destiny. If you'd like to check out the Frontier Magic Trilogy, find all three books in our online catalog here.

-Cindy

Blue Zones Power 9: Down Shift

This is the third post in a nine-part series in which we are sharing resources available at the library to help you get on track with the Blue Zones Project.

Work, family, chores, bills, taxes - let's face it, life can be stressful.  According to the Blue Zones website, "Stress leads to chronic inflammation associated with every major age-related disease. The world's longest-lived people have routines to shed that stress." Here are a few titles available in the library's catalog that can help you find ideas and ways to down shift and de-stress:

The Everything Stress Management Book
by Eve Adamson

The Everything Stress Management Book shows that it is possible to achieve your life goals and keep your physical and mental health intact. Beginning with an easy-to-follow quiz that helps you identify your vulnerable areas, the book then takes you step-by-step through the safest, most effective ways to relax, avoid stressors, keep perspective, and live a longer, happier life (Amazon).

The Art of Aromatherapy
by Pamela Allardice

An introduction into the world of essential oils. This attractive, easy-to-read reference contains many of the basics you'll need to start incorporating aromatherapy into your daily routine. Thirty of the most popular essential oils are presented, first with a brief description and place in history, then moving into the practical and medicinal realm (Amazon).

The One-Minute Meditator
by David Nichol and Bill Birchard

Step by step, The One-Minute Meditator will reveal your sources of stress, show you how to meditate in short increments, and inspire you to make meditation a part of your daily routine. Proving that meditation is both physically and emotionally healthful, Nichol and Birchard show readers how to meditate whenever they have a solitary minute or more.

How to Meditate
by Paul Roland

How to Meditate dispels the myths surrounding meditation, then explains awareness techniques that take you from a beginner's level to more advanced stages. Based on techniques used in Asia for thousands of years, it provides a step by step program.

20-Minute Vacations
by Judith Sachs

Twenty-Minute Vacations offers more than 100 relaxing, invigorating, and affordable "getaways" that really can be enjoyed in just 20 minutes. Examples include visiting a world-famous museum using the Internet, preparing a fruit and veggie facial, and reliving beach memories by running one's toes through a container of sand (Amazon).




If you'd like to check out any of these resources, click on the title to be taken to our online catalog. You can place a hold on the item using your library card number and your PIN.

Staff Pick: Ken Burns' The Dust Bowl

Using his established formula of photos, film footage, music, and interviews (including some very affecting recollections by those who lived through it), the documentarian, Ken Berns, details one of the grimmest periods in our history - "an epic of human pain and suffering" that, though relatively recent, is little known to most, other than by way of some Woody Guthrie songs and perhaps John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.

The Dust Bowl chronicles the worst man-made ecological disaster in American history, when a frenzied wheat boom on the southern Plains, followed by a decade-long drought during the 1930s, nearly swept away the breadbasket of the nation.

Menacing black blizzards killed farmers’ crops and livestock, threatened the lives of their children, and forced thousands of desperate families to pick up and move somewhere else. Vivid interviews with more than two dozen survivors of those hard times, combined with dramatic photographs and seldom seen movie footage, bring to life stories of incredible human suffering and equally incredible human perseverance.

The Dust Bowl, a four-hour, two-episode documentary from acclaimed filmmaker Ken Burns, is also a morality tale about our relationship to the land that sustains us—a lesson we ignore at our peril. If you like to check this DVD out, you can find it in our online catalog by clicking here.

-Julie

Blue Zones Power 9: Purpose

This is the second post in a nine-part series in which we are sharing resources available at the library to help you get on track with the Blue Zones Project. 

Do you know why you get out of bed in the morning? What keeps you going? The Blue Zones website suggests that, "Knowing your sense of purpose is worth up to seven years of extra life expectancy." Here are a few books available at the library that might help you discover your sense of purpose:

Thrive: Finding Happiness the Blue Zones Way
by Dan Buettner

This first book comes straight from Dan Buettner and the Blue Zones itself. It identifies demographically proven "happiness hotspots" worldwide, documents the happiest people on Earth, and reveals how people can create their own happy zones.

The Purpose Driven Life
by Rick Warren

Rick Warren describes how one can experience spiritual fulfillment through an understanding of God's plan for a meaningful life. This expanded edition include links to a video introduction and audio Bible study for each chapter, two new bonus chapters on the most common barriers to living on purpose, and access to an online community where you can discuss your journey to purpose, get feedback, and receive support.

A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose
by Eckhart Tolle

Tolle describes how our attachment to the ego creates the dysfunction that leads to anger, jealousy, and unhappiness, and shows readers how to awaken to a new state of consciousness and follow the path to a truly fulfilling existence.

The Secret Language of Destiny
by Gary Goldschneider & Joost Elffers

The Secret Language of Destiny addresses the question we all ask at some point during the course of our lives: "What is the purpose of my life?" It identifies, based on birthdate, what, on a soul level, someone came into this lifetime to achieve-in other words, their karmic signature.

What Do You Want To Do When You Grow Up?
by Dorothy W. Cantor

This practical and inspiring guide to negotiating life's passages takes readers on a richly rewarding voyage of self-discovery. The ultimate destination: personal as well as professional fulfillment. A much-needed manual in this era of widespread layoffs, corporate downsizing, and a workforce in seemingly perpetual transition (Amazon.com).




If you'd like to check out any of these resources, click on the title to be taken to our online catalog. You can place a hold on the item using your library card number and your PIN.

Book descriptions taken from our online catalog or the books.

Staff Pick: Winger

A teen at boarding school grapples with life, love, and rugby in a heartbreakingly funny novel. Ryan Dean West is a fourteen-year-old junior at a boarding school for rich kids. He’s living in Opportunity Hall, the dorm for troublemakers, and rooming with the biggest bully on the rugby team. And he’s madly in love with his best friend Annie, who thinks of him as a little boy.

With the help of his sense of humor, rugby buddies, and his penchant for doodling comics, Ryan Dean manages to survive life’s complications and even find some happiness along the way. But when the unthinkable happens, he has to figure out how to hold on to what’s important, even when it feels like things have fallen apart.

Filled with hand-drawn info-graphics and illustrations and told in a pitch-perfect voice, this realistic depiction of a teen’s experience strikes an exceptional balance of hilarious and heartbreaking. I decided to pick up this book because none of my librarian or bookish friends would shut up about how much they loved it.  Luckily, they were right, and I found one of my favorite protagonists I've ever read about.

Ryan Dean West is trying to survive boarding school - sometimes he's crude, sometimes he's sweet, and other times his choices are laugh out loud absurd.  As I was reading, there were definitely moments where I was reminded of my time in college.  Because this is Andrew Smith, Winger is also filled with tight, well-written prose and an ending that will make a lot of readers cry.  Immediately after finishing this story, I wanted to pick up everything else Smith has ever written.

If you'd like to check out Winger, you can place a hold on it in our online catalog with your library card number and PIN by clicking here.

-Liz