Elements of Style

Elements of Style: Designing a Home & a Life by Erin Gates

Summary: From the rising-star designer and author of the hit blog, Elements of Style, a full-color, fully illustrated book packed with honest advice, inspiration, ideas, and lessons learned about designing a home that reflects your personality and style. Elements of Style is a uniquely personal and practical decorating guide that shows how designing a home can be an outlet of personal expression and an exercise in self-discovery. Drawing on her ten years of experience in the interior design industry, Erin combines honest design advice and gorgeous professional photographs and illustrations with personal essays about the lessons she has learned while designing her own home and her own life—the first being: none of our homes or lives is perfect. Like a funny best friend, she reveals the disasters she confronted in her own kitchen renovation, her struggles with anorexia, her epic fight with her husband over a Lucite table, and her secrets for starting a successful blog. Organized by rooms in the house, Elements of Style invites readers into Erin’s own home as well as homes she has designed for clients. Fresh, modern, and colorful, it is brimming glamour and style as well as advice on practical matters from choosing kitchen counter materials to dressing a bed with pillows, picking a sofa, and decorating a nursery without cartoon characters. You’ll also find a charming foreword by Erin’s husband, Andrew, and an extensive Resource and Shopping Guide that provides an indispensable a roadmap for anyone embarking on their first serious home decorating adventure. With Erin’s help, you can finally make your house your home. Angie's Comments: Elements of Style gave me some ideas for decorating my apartment. As a renter, I also appreciated the occasional “Renter’s tip”. I had to keep reminding myself while reading this book that I don’t have anywhere close to the money that Erin’s clients have. However, keeping that in mind, I did find some interesting ideas that I could use in my own place. This book is another resource to use if you are interested in changing the look of your place!  Request this item

The Viscount Who Lived Down the Lane

The Viscount Who Lived Down the Lane by Elizabeth Boyle

Summary: In New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth Boyle's fourth novel in the Rhymes With Love series, a resolute young woman goes toe-to-toe with the Beast of Mayfair. She has no desire for love . . . As she arrives in Mayfair, Louisa Tempest is horrified when her incorrigible cat bolts from the carriage and dashes into a neighbor's house, where she comes face-to-face with the reclusive Viscount Wakefield. But even more dismaying than his foul temper is the disarray in which she finds his home. Convinced his demeanor would improve if his household were in order, Louisa resolves to put everything to rights. . . . until she meets the viscount who lives down the lane Much to his chagrin, Wakefield finds it impossible to keep the meddling Louisa out of his home, invading his daily life with her "improvements," and his nights with the tempting desires she sparks inside him. Wounded in the war, he's scorned society ever since his return . . . until Louisa opens the door to his heart and convinces him to give love a second chance. Angie's Comments: This book was witty and fun. Hannibal, the cat, is a wonderful character. I just wish he appeared more in the book! Louisa and Wakefield both have painful pasts, but they manage to overcome them. The banter between the two is adorable. It is a light-hearted read that deals with some weighty topics in a gentle manner.  Request this item

Decisive

Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work

Summary: Chip and Dan Heath, the bestselling authors of Switch and Made to Stick, tackle one of the most critical topics in our work and personal lives: how to make better decisions. 　 Research in psychology has revealed that our decisions are disrupted by an array of biases and irrationalities: We’re overconfident. We seek out information that supports us and downplay information that doesn’t. We get distracted by short-term emotions. When it comes to making choices, it seems, our brains are flawed instruments. Unfortunately, merely being aware of these shortcomings doesn’t fix the problem, any more than knowing that we are nearsighted helps us to see. The real question is: How can we do better? In Decisive, the Heaths, based on an exhaustive study of the decision-making literature, introduce a four-step process designed to counteract these biases. Written in an engaging and compulsively readable style, Decisive takes readers on an unforgettable journey, from a rock star’s ingenious decision-making trick to a CEO’s disastrous acquisition, to a single question that can often resolve thorny personal decisions. Along the way, we learn the answers to critical questions like these: How can we stop the cycle ofagonizing over our decisions? How can we make group decisions without destructive politics? And how can we ensure that we don’t overlook precious opportunities to change our course?　 Decisive is the Heath brothers’ most powerful—and important—book yet, offering fresh strategies and practical tools enabling us to make better choices. Because the right decision, at the right moment, can make all the difference. Angie's Comments: The Heath brothers propose several steps when making a decision. Those steps aren’t what I normally do when making a decision, but I plan on using them in the future! If you are at all interested in making better decisions, I highly recommend this book. The writing is easy to understand. Will I use the steps for all decisions that I make? No, but for the important decisions I now have better way to think about them.  Request this item

Hunting the Elements

Hunting the Elements DVD

Summary: Where do nature’s building blocks, called the elements, come from? They’re the hidden ingredients of everything in our world, from the carbon in our bodies to the metals in our smartphones. To unlock their secrets, David Pogue, technology columnist and lively host of NOVA’s popular "Making Stuff" series, spins viewers through the world of weird, extreme chemistry: the strongest acids, the deadliest poisons, the universe’s most abundant elements, and the rarest of the rare—substances cooked up in atom smashers that flicker into existence for only fractions of a second. Angie's Comments: Hunting the Elements is a NOVA special. This is a good introduction to elements, specially the rare earth elements that my science teacher didn’t mention in class. The host, David Pogue, likes making jokes and emoting, so I did get tired of some of his antics. However, Pogue is good at rekindling awe for elements. I learned a lot, and had fun while learning. This DVD would be good for middle school and high school students interested in chemistry or who want to understand the elements better.  Request this item

Prehistoric Dinosaur Disasters

Prehistoric Dinosaur Disasters DVD

Summary: Since the Earth's creation 4.5 billion years ago, the planet has been struck by a series of catastrophes each pushing life to the edge of extinction. Again and again, dinosaurs found themselves victims of these catastrophes, but from each disaster came new life. While a dominant species was wiped out, hardier creatures survived and thrived, moving into the vacuum left by the extinction. In turn, these gigantic creatures took over the planet until they fell victim to yet another mass extinction. The Earth's history is rife with prehistoric disasters that have molded the planet and changed the course of evolution. Each disaster took another leap forward on the evolutionary trail from single-celled bacteria to dinosaurs to humankind itself. Without this series of events, neither mankind nor any of the life we see around us would be here today. Angie's Comments: I loved this DVD! It includes five shows: Birth of the Planet; Snowball Earth; Planet of Fire; Asteroid Strike; and Mammals vs Dinos: Age of Gigantism.  The shows focus on the creation of the Moon, the time when the Earth was so cold that ice covered the globe, the time when huge eruptions warmed the Earth, and the extinction of the dinosaurs. Partly through the first show, I realized that I had seen this recently. I rewatched it because the shows are good at explaining the disasters and are engaging. I learned a lot from this shows about the Earth. Fortunately, the shows are fascinating so it isn’t like reading a textbook at all. If you are interested in geology, dinosaurs, or biology, this DVD is fantastic.  Request this item

Medusa's Gaze and Vampire's Bite

Medusa's Gaze and Vampire's Bite: The Science of Monsters by Matt Kaplan

Summary: We all know “there’s no such thing as monsters,” but our imaginations tell us otherwise. From the mythical beasts of ancient Greece to the hormonal vampires of the Twilight saga, monsters have captivated us for millennia. Matt Kaplan, a noted science journalist and monster-myth enthusiast, employs an entertaining mix of cutting-edge research and a love of lore to explore the history behind these fantastical fictions and our hardwired obsession with things that go bump in the night. Ranging across history, Medusa’s Gaze and Vampire’s Bite tackles the enduring questions that arise on the frontier between fantasy and reality. What caused ancient Minoans to create the tale of the Minotaur and its subterranean maze? Did dragons really exist? What inspired the creation of vampires and werewolves, and why are we so drawn to them? With the eye of a journalist and the voice of a storyteller, Kaplan takes readers to the forefront of science, where our favorite figures of horror may find real-life validation. Does the legendary Kraken, a squid of epic proportions, really roam the deep? Are we close to making Jurassic Park a reality by replicating a dinosaur from fossilized DNA? As our fears evolve, so do our monsters, and Medusa’s Gaze and Vampire’s Bite charts the rise of the ultimate beasts, humans themselves. Angie's Comments: If you like monsters, this book is for you! The author explores what might have inspired monsters such as giant animals, chimeras, Medusa, sea monsters, dragons, ghosts, and vampires. The writing is more pop than scholarly, and it works well for teenagers and adults. In some cases, Kaplan considers explanations that I think are too unrealistic, but the ideas are intriguing. This book makes you consider the reason and inspirations for monsters as portrayed in myths, movies, and books.  Request this item

Bad Country

Bad Country by CB McKenzie

Summary: The newest winner of the Tony Hillerman Prize, a debut mystery set in the Southwest starring a former rodeo cowboy turned private investigator, told in a transfixingly original style. Rodeo Grace Garnet lives with his old dog in a remote corner of Arizona known to locals as El Hoyo. He doesn't get many visitors in The Hole, but a body found near his home has drawn police attention to his front door. The victim is not one of the many undocumented immigrants who risk their lives to cross the border in Rodeo's harsh and deadly "backyard," but a member of a major Southwestern Indian tribe, whose death is part of a mysterious rompecabeza—a classic crime puzzler—that includes multiple murders, cold-blooded betrayals, and low-down scheming, with Rodeo caught in the middle. Retired from the rodeo circuit and scraping by on piecework as a bounty hunter, warrant server, and divorce snoop, Rodeo doesn't have much choice but to say yes when offered an unusual case. An elderly Indian woman from his own Reservation has hired him to help discover who murdered her grandson, but she seems strangely uninterested in the results. Her attitude seems heartless, but as Rodeo pursues interrelated cases, he learns that the old woman's indifference is nothing compared to true hatred, and aligned against a variety of creative and cruel foes, the hard-pressed PI is about to discover just how far hate can go. CB McKenzie's Bad Country is a noir novel that is as deep and twisty as a desert arroyo. With confident, accomplished prose, McKenzie captures the rough-and-tumble outer reaches of the Southwest in a transfixingly original style that transcends the traditional crime novel. Angie's Comments: Fantastic book! The mystery is interesting, but the writing is great. The characters are well developed, and each has his or her own problems. If you are looking for a cozy mystery, this is not the book for you. If you read Tony Hillerman or love books set in the Southwest, this book is for you! The book doesn’t use quotation marks when someone is talking, so that makes it a little harder to read at the beginning. However, the lack of quotation marks makes the character’s voices flow with the description.  Request this item