Information, Answers & Reviews

OK, who can resist a title like How I Killed Pluto...? It promises and then delivers a light, interesting take on the Pluto demotion from one of the nine big ones to a dwarf planet at the edge of our solar system. "My very excellent mother just served us nine pizzas." Do you remember that line from science class in grade school? The words helped us remember the planets and their order in the solar system: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto. Alas, now mother is just serving us nine___?
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Our library had a few copies of this on our BSE shelves. In case didn't know, the library now has Best Seller Express or BSE dvds available for checkout for three days and limited to one per person. The BSE dvds are new dvd's that the library purchases to make available to the public for walk-in customers only. They can not be held or transferred. After their newness wears off, the BSE dvds are put into regular circulation with all the other feature films. This allowed me the chance to check out For Colored Girls.

This is a powerful film that examines the lives of different African American women as they struggle to survive overwhelming hardships to maintain a balance between love, work, family and life. I'm surprised that Tyler Perry actually took on something serious for once. He is the director of this film but he usually makes outrageous comedies. In fact, this film is so serious that I need to issue a strong trigger warning because there are disturbing images of abuse, violence, rape and sexual assault.

The Edgar Awards are presented every year by the Mystery Writers of America and are often considered the most prestigious awards for the mystery genre. This year's awards were presented this weekend and the winners include:

Best Novel: The Lock Artist by Steve Hamilton

Best First Novel: Rogue Island by Bruce DeSilva

Best Paperback Original: Long Time Coming by Robert Goddard

Best Fact Crime: Scoreboard, Baby: A Story of College Football, Crime and Complicity by Ken Armstrong and Nick Perry
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How many times have you been distracted while driving and seen a cyclist jut into the road or a child chasing a ball, or even a scampering beagle? You brake and think, thank God. But for Darin Strauss, newly eighteen, setting out with friends for a game of Putt Putt on a warm spring day at the tail end of his senior year, things did not go that smoothly. A cyclist suddenly veered across a lane and a half--and as he braked all he saw was a yellow spoke reflector catch the light and a head crash into his windshield. For him, the worst had happened. The police cleared him, said it was not his fault. The local paper reported this, but Strauss has had to life the rest of his life with the guilt and pain of this accident.
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