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The Martian trailer, check it out!

I am super excited to see this movie. I enjoyed the book, check out my review here.

6 Spring 2015 Nonfiction Books

Elon Musk : Tesla, SpaceX, and the quest for a fantastic future by Ashlee Vance

 In Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, veteran technology journalist Ashlee Vance provides the first inside look into the extraordinary life and times of Silicon Valley's most audacious entrepreneur. Written with exclusive access to Musk, his family and friends, the book traces the entrepreneur's journey from a rough upbringing in South Africa to the pinnacle of the global business world. Vance spent more than 30 hours in conversation with Musk and interviewed close to 300 people to tell the tumultuous stories of Musk's world-changing companies: PayPal, Tesla Motors, SpaceX and SolarCity, and to characterize a man who has renewed American industry and sparked new levels of innovation while making plenty of enemies along the way.
        Vance uses Musk's story to explore one of the pressing questions of our time: can the nation of inventors and creators which led the modern world for a century still compete in an age of fierce global competition? He argues that Musk--one of the most unusual and striking figures in American business history--is a contemporary amalgam of legendary inventors and industrialists like Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Howard Hughes, and Steve Jobs. More than any other entrepreneur today, Musk has dedicated his energies and his own vast fortune to inventing a future that is as rich and far-reaching as the visionaries of the golden age of science-fiction fantasy. -Amazon Description

Girl in a Band by Kim Gordon

 

 

Kim Gordon, founding member of Sonic Youth, fashion icon, and role model for a generation of women, now tells her story—a memoir of life as an artist, of music, marriage, motherhood, independence, and as one of the first women of rock and roll, written with the lyricism and haunting beauty of Patti Smith's Just Kids.
Often described as aloof, Kim Gordon opens up as never before in Girl in a Band. Telling the story of her family, growing up in California in the '60s and '70s, her life in visual art, her move to New York City, the men in her life, her marriage, her relationship with her daughter, her music, and her band, Girl in a Band is a rich and beautifully written memoir.
Gordon takes us back to the lost New York of the 1980s and '90s that gave rise to Sonic Youth, and the Alternative revolution in popular music. The band helped build a vocabulary of music—paving the way for Nirvana, Hole, Smashing Pumpkins and many other acts. But at its core, Girl in a Band examines the route from girl to woman in uncharted territory, music, art career, what partnership means—and what happens when that identity dissolves.
Evocative and edgy, filled with the sights and sounds of a changing world and a transformative life, Girl in a Band is the fascinating chronicle of a remarkable journey and an extraordinary artist. -Amazon Description

Irritable Hearts A PTSD Love Story by Mac McClelland

(DAD copy only in the Lake County Library System)

 
"I had nightmares, flashbacks. I dissociated... Changes in self-perception and hallucinations-those are some of my other symptoms. You are poison, I chanted silently to myself. And your poison is contagious."
So begins Mac McClelland's powerful, unforgettable memoir, Irritable Hearts.
When thirty-year-old, award-winning human rights journalist Mac McClelland left Haiti after reporting on the devastating earthquake of 2010, she never imagined how the assignment would irrevocably affect her own life. Back home in California, McClelland cannot stop reliving vivid scenes of violence. She is plagued by waking terrors, violent fantasies, and crippling emotional breakdowns. She can't sleep or stop crying. Her life in shambles, it becomes clear that she is suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Her bewilderment about this sudden loss of control is magnified by the intensity of her feelings for Nico, a French soldier she met in Port-au-Prince and with whom she connected instantly and deeply.
With inspiring fearlessness, McClelland tackles perhaps her most harrowing assignment to date: investigating the damage in her own mind and repairing her broken psyche. She begins to probe the depths of her illness, exploring our culture's history with PTSD, delving into the latest research by the country's top scientists and therapists, and spending time with veterans and their families. McClelland discovers she is far from alone: while we frequently associate PTSD with wartime combat, it is more often caused by other manner of trauma and can even be contagious-close proximity to those afflicted can trigger its symptoms. As she confronts the realities of her diagnosis, she opens up to the love that seems to have found her at an inopportune moment.
Irritable Hearts is a searing, personal medical mystery that unfolds at a breakneck pace. But it is also a romance. McClelland fights desperately to repair her heart so that she can give it to the kind, patient, and compassionate man with whom she wants to share a life. Vivid, suspenseful, tender, and intimate, Irritable Hearts is a remarkable exploration of vulnerability and resilience, control and acceptance. It is a riveting and hopeful story of survival, strength, and love. -Amazon Description

 

So You've Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson

(book and audiobook available in the Lake County Library System)

 

 It's about the terror, isn't it?'

'The terror of what?' I said.

'The terror of being found out.'

For the past three years, Jon Ronson has travelled the world meeting recipients of high-profile public shamings. The shamed are people like us - people who, say, made a joke on social media that came out badly, or made a mistake at work. Once their transgression is revealed, collective outrage circles with the force of a hurricane and the next thing they know they're being torn apart by an angry mob, jeered at, demonized, sometimes even fired from their job.

A great renaissance of public shaming is sweeping our land. Justice has been democratized. The silent majority are getting a voice. But what are we doing with our voice? We are mercilessly finding people's faults. We are defining the boundaries of normality by ruining the lives of those outside it. We are using shame as a form of social control.

Simultaneously powerful and hilarious in the way only Jon Ronson can be, So You've Been Publicly Shamed is a deeply honest book about modern life, full of eye-opening truths about the escalating war on human flaws - and the very scary part we all play in it. -Amazon Description

The Ghost in my Brain: How a Concussion Stole My Life and How the New Science of Brain Plasticity Helped Me Get It Back by Clark Elliot, Ph.D.

 

  In 1999, Clark Elliott suffered a concussion when his car was rear-ended. Overnight his life changed from that of a rising professor with a research career in artificial intelligence to a humbled man struggling to get through a single day. At times he couldn’t walk across a room, or even name his five children. Doctors told him he would never fully recover.  After eight years, the cognitive demands of his job, and of being a single parent, finally became more than he could manage. As a result of one final effort to recover, he crossed paths with two brilliant Chicago-area research-clinicians—one an optometrist emphasizing neurodevelopmental techniques, the other a cognitive psychologist—working on the leading edge of brain plasticity. Within weeks the ghost of who he had been started to re-emerge.

Remarkably, Elliott kept detailed notes throughout his experience, from the moment of impact to the final stages of his recovery, astounding documentation that is the basis of this fascinating book. The Ghost in My Brain gives hope to the millions who suffer from head injuries each year, and provides a unique and informative window into the world’s most complex computational device: the human brain.-Amazon Description

The Upright Thinkers: The Human Journey from Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos 

by Leonard Mlodinow

A few million years ago, our ancestors came down from the trees and began to stand upright, freeing our hands to create tools and our minds to grapple with the world around us.

Leonard Mlodinow takes us on a passionate and inspiring tour through the exciting history of human progress and the key events in the development of science. In the process, he presents a fascinating new look at the unique characteristics of our species and our society that helped propel us from stone tools to written language and through the birth of chemistry, biology, and modern physics to today’s technological world.

Along the way he explores the cultural conditions that influenced scientific thought through the ages and the colorful personalities of some of the great philosophers, scientists, and thinkers: Galileo, who preferred painting and poetry to medicine and dropped out of university; Isaac Newton, who stuck needlelike bodkins into his eyes to better understand changes in light and color; and Antoine Lavoisier, who drank nothing but milk for two weeks to examine its effects on his body. Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, and many lesser-known but equally brilliant minds also populate these pages, each of their stories showing how much of human achievement can be attributed to the stubborn pursuit of simple questions (why? how?), bravely asked.
  The Upright Thinkers is a book for science lovers and for anyone interested in creative thinking and in our ongoing quest to understand our world. At once deeply informed, accessible, and infused with the author’s trademark wit, this insightful work is a stunning tribute to humanity’s intellectual curiosity. -Amazon Description

All these titles are avaisble to be placed on hold here.

Half a King by Joe Abercrombie's first venture into writing for the young adult audience. It is a quick read  compared to his adult offerings, such as Best Served Cold and The First Law Trilogy. Abercrombie is well known for his grimdark style and while Half a King is aimed at young adults the world is still a dark place where terrible things happen all the time.
I enjoyed this book more than I can say. I picked it up thinking it was a standalone. It ended in a way that it could have been the end. Today, I found out that it is the first a trilogy and that the second book,Half the World,  is already out (and available in the Lake County Library System). The third, Half a War, is to be released July 28th. I am very excited to see where this story goes.

“I swore an oath to avenge the death of my father. I may be half a man, but I swore a whole oath.”
 
Prince Yarvi has vowed to regain a throne he never wanted. But first he must survive cruelty, chains, and the bitter waters of the Shattered Sea. And he must do it all with only one good hand.

The deceived will become the deceiver.
 
Born a weakling in the eyes of his father, Yarvi is alone in a world where a strong arm and a cold heart rule. He cannot grip a shield or swing an axe, so he must sharpen his mind to a deadly edge.

The betrayed will become the betrayer.
 
Gathering a strange fellowship of the outcast and the lost, he finds they can do more to help him become the man he needs to be than any court of nobles could.

Will the usurped become the usurper?
 
But even with loyal friends at his side, Yarvi finds that his path may end as it began—in twists, and traps, and tragedy. - Amazon Description

5-26 10 New DVDs Including Movies, Documentaries, and TV Shows

Documentaries

 A  Path Appears

A compelling look at the universality of gender inequality and the roots of vulnerability.

A Path Appears follows author/reporters Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn and celebrity activists Malin Akerman, Mia Farrow, Ronan Farrow, Jennifer Garner, Regina Hall, Ashley Judd, Blake Lively, Eva Longoria, and Alfre Woodard to Colombia, Haiti, Kenya, and throughout the United States as they explore the roots of gender inequality, the devastating impact of poverty and the ripple effects that follow - including sex trafficking, teen pregnancy, gender-based violence, and child slavery. In their travels, they meet with inspiring activists who are creating effective solutions to gender-based oppression, transforming lives and providing a roadmap for sustainable future change. Based on the best-selling book A Path Appears: Transforming Lives, Creating Opportunity by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. – Amazon Description

Invasion of the Killer Whales

 

A remarkable new story is unfolding in the Arctic. As the ice melts and polar bears struggle to survive in a fast-warming world, another animal is taking over the polar bear's once dominant role as top predator. An ever-increasing number of killer whales - or orcas - are appearing in Arctic waters in the summer months, attracted to these huge hunting grounds by the growing expanses of open water and attacking the same prey animals polar bears once survived on: seals, narwhal, belugas, and bowhead whales. Polar bears may be classified as marine mammals, but they are not adapted to hunting in the water despite being able to swim huge distances. They need the ice to hunt and as it vanishes they can no longer reach their traditional prey. And they are certainly no match for the world's greatest aquatic hunter - the killer whale. As the polar bear s world is shrinking, the orca's is growing. –Amazon Description

Movies

Dracula Untold

 

The origin story of the man who became the enduring legend of Dracula is told in Dracula Untold, an epic action-adventure starring Luke Evans (Fast & Furious 6, The Hobbit series) in the title role. Gary Shore directs, and Michael De Luca produces. –Amazon Description

Foxcatcher

 

Based on true events, "Foxcatcher" tells the dark and fascinating story of the unlikely and ultimately tragic relationship between an eccentric multi-millionaire (Steve Carell) and two champion wrestlers (Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffalo). Directed by Academy Award nominee Bennett Miller (2005, Best Director, "Capote") it is a rich and moving story of brotherly love, misguided loyalty, and the corruption and emotional bankruptcy that can accompany great power and wealth.

The Gambler

 

Jim Bennett (Mark Wahlberg) is a professor leading a double life as a high-stakes gambler. When he borrows money from dangerous gangsters, he places the lives of his loved ones in mortal danger and must risk everything to keep from losing it all. – Amazon Description

Into the Woods

 

From the director of CHICAGO and the producer of WICKED comes a modern twist on the beloved fairy tales you thought you knew. Meryl Streep stars in this epic musical saga about daring to venture INTO THE WOODS. Iconic characters, such as Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Jack and the Beanstalk and Rapunzel, find their fates intertwined with a humble baker and his wife, whose longing to have a child sends them on a quest to reverse a witch's (Streep) curse. With an all-star cast, this spellbinding adventure is everything you could ever wish for! –Amazon Description

Whiplash

 

Andrew Neiman (Miles Teller) is an ambitious young jazz drummer, single-minded in his pursuit to rise to the top of his elite east coast music conservatory. Plagued by the failed writing career of his father, Andrew hungers day and night to become one of the greats. Terence Fletcher (J.K. Simmons), an instructor equally known for his teaching talents as for his terrifying methods, leads the top jazz ensemble in the school. Fletcher discovers Andrew and transfers the aspiring drummer into his band, forever changing the young man's life. Andrew's passion to achieve perfection quickly spirals into obsession, as his ruthless teacher continues to push him to the brink of both his ability – and his sanity. –Amazon Description

TV Shows

Grantchester (Season 1)

 

FAITH. LOVE. MURDER. A young clergyman and a down-to-earth cop team up to fight crime.

It's 1953 and Sidney Chambers (James Norton, Happy Valley) is vicar of Grantchester, a village just outside Cambridge, England. Sidney's is a quiet life. He tends to his flock, keeps up with his jazz collection, and does his best to contain his passion for beautiful heiress Amanda Kendall. But when one of his parishioners dies in suspicious circumstances, Sidney quickly finds that people confide things in a parish priest that they would never tell police. Pushed into the dangerous world of lies, betrayal, and murder, Sidney joins forces with the overworked and weary Detective Inspector Geordie Keating (Robson Green, Wire in the Blood, Reckless). It's the start of a beautiful friendship that will take Sidney and Geordie through a series of challenging cases, revealing the dark side of early 1950s England.- Based on acclaimed mystery novels by James Runcie! –Amazon Description

The Knick (Season 1)

 

Set in downtown New York in 1900 - The Knick is a groundbreaking new scripted drama from Oscar® and Emmy®-winning director Steven Soderbergh starring Oscar® nominee Clive Owen, who also received a Golden Globe nomination for this series. The Knick centers on the Knickerbocker Hospital (dubbed The Knick), which faces a major upheaval due to poor finances and an exodus of wealthy patients. The one remaining star is Dr. Thackery (played by Clive Owen) who along with the hospital staff of surgeons, nurses and other personnel must struggle to keep both themselves and the hospital going. –Amazon Description

Sons of Anarchy (7 The Final Season)

 

Reeling from the death of the woman he loves, Jax Teller steers SAMCRO full-throttle down the hell-bound road to revenge, allowing nothing to stand in his way. The streets of Charming run red with blood as shifting alliances and fatal mistakes lead to chaos, betrayal, and all-out murder. The body count soars, and dark secrets give way to darker truths, until the only question remaining is who will live...and who will die. –Catalog Summary 

All of the items may be placed on hold here.