Category: Book of the Day

Wouldn’t you rather listen to Jon Stewart?

 

Think reading a comedy book sounds just not as funny as your regular Daily Show personality banter? Then why not check out the audiobook?  The Daily Show Presents Earth: The Book is read to you by Jon Stewart, Wyatt Cenac, Jason Jones, Samantha Bee, John Oliver, and (somehow) Sigourney Weaver.

I listened to Stephen Colbert’s I am American and So Can You (as shouted by the author), and it was a much funnier experience for me than just reading the book.  So give it some serious consideration, and then check out some of the other audiobooks we have!

Doing yoga? Let us help you do it better!

Students and staff alike are doing yoga on campus. If you’re not already getting your yoga on at home or in a gym, there’s a good chance you’ve attended something on campus.

My yoga experiences generally result in pain and falling down, and then pain from falling down. To help maximize yoga results and hopefully limit all of that falling, I’m going to recommend checking out a book like today’s selection, Anatomy of Yoga: An Insider’s Guide to Improving Your Poses by Abigail Ellsworth. By getting a look at what these poses are requiring from your body and what should actually be getting stretched, instructors or participants can see what they’re doing wrong or what could be done better.

Trust me and my sports injuries: it’s worth using a reference like this.

Watch people fight over I-69

Did you know that Interstate 69 is apparently a pretty controversial highway? I guess a better question is, did you know there was a controversial highway? You can certainly find out why by picking up Interstate 69: The Unfinished History of the Last Great American Highway by Matt Dellinger.

Projected to cost a whole lot of money and hoping to eventually connect Canada to Mexico, several people have taken issue with the existence and development of I-69. Aside from it’s cost, some feel that the interstate is an attempt to ruin the United States commerce economy in favor of globalization… or at least continent-ization.

Learn more about it by checking out this book, and understand how a road could upset so many people.

It’s almost election time, learn about the process

Not everybody has been happy with how elections have been handled in the 21st century. Ushered in with the 2000 presidential elections and the hanging chads, continuing on to complaints about the voting process in every election since, people are looking at what can be changed.

Today’s book, Reforming the Electoral Process in America by Brian L. Fife, looks at what processes, if any, can be improved to insure a better, easier, and more accurate method of getting the people’s truly selected choice into their office.  It’s a good read for anyone leaning left or right to learn about what takes place in the voting booth, and what could be done better.

And whether you read the book or not, make sure you know where to vote!

People seem to love this Mockingjay business

It’s time to scream like a Twilight fan in 2007: Mockingjay, The third book from the Hunger Games series has arrived on the JCCC shelf… AND IT IS GONE! But on the bright side, we currently have only 3 (count’em! 3!) holds on the book including the lucky patron who’s going to get it first.  Our fabulous friends at Johnson County Library have a good amount of copies, but also have 441 people on the wait-list according to my extensive Outstanding Holds list with them.

This Hunger Games business is the story of a future North America that has turned into an epic police state which frequently forces a random member from each poor area to compete in a to-the-death “reality TV” show. It focuses on one particular girl, Katniss, one of the most popular competitors in the history of “The Hunger Games.” People are going absolutely nuts for this series, so you might as well check it out.

Engineers make money, and you could be one

If you’d like to know what it takes to become an engineer, then there may be no better starting point than someone like Dean Millar. Not only is he an industry expert, but he is also a professor who wants to see students succeed. His book, Ready for Takeoff! : A Winning Process for Launching Your Engineering Career is a great guide for future engineers. It approaches the things you’d think it would like classes and career paths, and also tackles things like attitude, teamwork, and other general workplace habits. It’s a great book for anyone who wants or might just be interested in life as an engineer.

Watch a P.O.W. escape in the Book of the Day

Dieter Dengler was shot down over Vietnam while flying for the Navy in the 1960s. After being tortured and held captive, he would lead a group of fellow POWs on one of the most famous escapes documented. Hero found: The Greatest POW Escape of the Vietnam War is one of the most recent tellings of his escape, this time through a collection of interviews with family, friends, and fellow soldiers as well as with government declassified documents.

It’s about digital pictures, so there’s a cat on the cover

One piece of advice my dad always gave me was to keep backin’ up backin’ up backin’ up my computer’s hard drive. This was a good idea, because the project laptop that holds all of our digital images just got fried.

We never did anything unorthadox, but if you’ve got a digital camera and you’re looking to goof around (because expensive toys are still toys), today’s book is a place to start. Digital Photo Madness by Thom Gaines promises 50 things you can do to have fun with the pictures you capture.  Might as well.

After all, the Internet needs more cats.

Need a topic for your paper? Check out Opposing Viewpoints

Do you have an argumentative paper, or you need a current topic to tackle for an assignment?  One series of books we have, Opposing Viewpoints, was made just for that.

Today’s Book of the Day, Homeschooling: Opposing Viewpoints, edited by Noah Berlatsky, is a collection of scholarly articles and news sources portraying both those in favor and those against homeschooling.  This is how all of the books are set up, and also how the companion database is portrayed (must have campus login for database).  The books are on the shelves, just do a title search for “Opposing Viewpoints” in our catalog (or click here and I’ll do it for you. We’re cool like that). If you’ve never checked out the series before, I highly recommend it. It’s a great place to get started for a lot of different assignments you’ll get across different classes.

Race & Our Neighbors to the South

While Afro-Mexican may not be the most common term, there have been communities in Mexico with populations of African descent since North America was colonised. This book, Black Mexico: Race and Society from Colonial to Modern Times by Ben Vinson III and Matthew Restall, collects many documents and interviews to create a series of chapters illustrating first-hand accounts across the timeline of this particular aspect of race in Mexican culture has changed and existed. It’s an interesting look into the perceptions of ethnicity and racial identity.