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We will never have a definitive answer to this question, just as we will never determine which is better when comparing the apple to the orange, the dog to the cat, the bird to the bee.
Traditionally, many of us prefer the book. The book brings our imagination into play more fully because it lacks visual and sound cues.
Now with YouTube and smartphones, video is with us wherever we go. We can make use of minutes or even seconds of spare time at the tap of a fingertip.
At the same time, many of us are less accustomed to long periods of concentration. We are less able to focus for extended periods on a single task. This leaves us to rely more on the engrossing nature of video.
And there’s just so much audiovisual out there! There used to be only a few television stations. Now there are so many more distribution channels. Competitors such as HMO, Netflix, and Amazon keep stepping up production to compete for our consumer dollars and our viewing time.
Many of today’s films originally came to market as best-selling novels. So there is a strong relationship between the novels being published and the most compelling video being produced.
This means we can enjoy two versions—book and movie—for the same titles. We can double the experience and double our fun.
With today being the first day of summer and acclaimed musical genius, Brian Wilson’s 77th Birthday , what a more appropriate time to take a look at Wilson’s famous band’s top 5 albums. Wilson, his brothers Dennis and Carl, Cousin Mike Love, and school friend Al Jardine formed The Beach Boys over 57 years ago and in doing so created timeless music filled with fun, sun, girls, and surf. The wave they created shows no sign of waning, in fact just this year, The Beach Boys have continued on for their 57th Anniversary to sold-out shows and critical acclaim. The band’s music has provided a cultural bedrock and has left such an indelible mark that they are known as and simply referred to as “America’s Band”. Here is a list of their top 5 albums:
1. “Endless Summer” (1974)
This greatest hits album sparked the resurgence of The Beach Boys popularity and helped turn them from has-beens to legends. A #1 album in 1974, it contains all their greatest hits (at the time) and the songs they are best known for.
Key Tracks: “California Girls”, “Good Vibrations”, “Surfin’ USA”
2. “Pet Sounds” (1966)
This legendary album is found on many “Greatest Albums of All Time” lists, usually in the #1 or #2 spot. This album showed that the band was more than just a surf group but were actually artists on the level of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones.
Key Tracks: “Wouldn’t It Be Nice”, “God Only Knows”, “Sloop John B”
3. “Sunflower” (1970)
While Pet Sounds is considered Brian Wilson’s masterpiece, this album is considered the band’s masterpiece. With Brian retreating from the band, music industry, and the world at the time; this album shows the band picking up the slack left by the oldest Wilson. This album showed that the other Boys could definitely make amazing music in their own right even with the long shadow cast by older brother Bri.
Key Tracks: “Forever”, “This Whole World”, “Cool, Cool Water”
4. “The Beach Boys Love You” (1977)
This is the album that has long divided the group’s fans. It may be a “love it or hate it” type of album but one that all will agree is the most unique Beach Boys album ever made, before or since. In fact, no other album by any group sounds quite like this. It shows Brian Wilson returning with full force, back writing and producing all the material.
Key Tracks: “Roller Skating Child”, “Honkin’ Down the Highway”, “The Night Was So Young”
5. “That’s Why God Made the Radio” (2012)
This is the band’s most recent album. It is the band’s first album since 1992 and the first with Brian Wilson since 1985. Again, it shows Brother Bri returning with full force, back writing and producing all but one track. The album debuted at #3 on The Billboard Top 200, showing that age hasn’t diminished the group’s talent nor their popularity.
Key Tracks: “That’s Why God Made The Radio”, “Isn’t It Time”, “From There to Back Again”
So take a listen to a band, who’s music has defined popular culture and provided many with an endless Summer. Surf’s up!!
-Brian S.
Public speaking is not something most people find fun. For many, it is an uncomfortable task they begrudgingly do for work or school and for roughly 10% of the population it is a genuine phobia. As someone who falls somewhere between those two, I take any help I can get when preparing for a presentation. Luckily, your library card gives you access to a ton of useful resources to make your next speech, talk, or presentation a hit. The list below is a collection of resources that I found useful or are popular with other patrons or users of the given platform.
Lynda is a great source for business related video tutorials not just on public speaking, but a variety of communication skills. I included several tutorials that I found useful, but there are many more on the service. It also offers information on common software often used during presentations, like Microsoft Powerpoint.
Universal Class offers a course on the essentials of public speaking that can be completed at your own place and covers: how to combat stage fright, elements of an effective speech, how to research an audience before you arrive, how to develop your own style, how to organize a speech’s structure, how and when to use visual aids, how to control and train your voice, nonverbal communication, and how to best prepare yourself for questions from the audience.
Gale courses are taught in 6 week intervals and covers a lot of the same information as Universal Class, but has generally more active instructors who will be glad to answer your questions through the discussion board.
We also included a list of popular collection items you can check out. TED talks in particular I found to be especially entertaining.
The online resources section is a grab bag of useful videos and resources, but I would pay special attention to anything from TED. TED events offer some great examples of public speaking as well as providing valuable insight into a variety of topics.
Once you have taken the time to absorb the knowledge from the resources of your choice, it is up to you to find a way to practice. There are always opportunities to speak in public if you know where to look. If you’re a student, find a club you can join based on your interests that hosts events. Many schools also host debate teams, which is great way to hone your ability to argue and persuade to an audience. Toastmasters International has groups hosted all across the world and most groups are more than happy to accept new members.
On Lynda
On Universal Class
On Gale
Collection Items
Online Resources
With Memorial Day coming up on Monday May 27th, we here at The Fountaindale Public Library are taking the time to pay tribute and respect to those who have served in our country’s armed forces.
This month’s blog contains a plethora of books to choose from as well as a smattering of audio books that take a look at the brave men and women who have served in the United States Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, and Coast Guard.
Here is a sampling of some of the titles that await you:
So, come on in and get to know a little more about all that these brave men and women do!
– Brian S
In 2015, Twitch streamed the entirety of Bob Ross’ “The Joy of Painting” to commemorate the introduction of Twitch Creative. For a bit over a week, I along with 5.6 million other viewers watched all 403 episodes of the “happy little trees” guy’s show. The absolute calmness and assuredness that Bob had in his craft was remarkable and I wanted to experience something like that in a creative outlet. Just not with all the set up and paint, that’s a lot of work. I compromised and the second day into the stream, I went out and bought a sketchbook, put pencil to paper, and started drawing.
For over a year I kept up with drawing and filled a page a day. I was happy with what I was able to create with just a bit of wood and graphite. But, life got in the way and I spent less and less time in the sketchbook and I shelved it for quite some time. Recently, I picked it up again and found I lost a lot of the fundamentals. Seeing that Gale did offer a course for drawing, I decided to try it out and see what I could pull out from it.
Each Gale course is six week long with two lessons released every week, each containing five chapters, an FAQ, short five question quiz, an assignment that could be 30 minutes of practice, a short task, or something else. It depends on how creative the instructor wants to be, but they are not graded. The only graded assignment is an open book final exam with 36 question that can only be taken only once. Get 70% of them right and you pass the course!
Drawing for the Absolute Beginner is an art course taught by Chad Walker, a concept designer and artist of several award-winning games, including “Age of Empires, “Age of Kings,” and “Age of Conquerors.” While the majority of his work assumes digital modeling and he does use digital tools during the instruction videos, the course is material agnostic. I followed along fine with just pencil and paper. I liked that the instructor was much more active on the discussion board compared to other courses. While you will need to go through the material to pass the course by Gale’s standards, the true mark of success will be your drawing. It is not required to submit anything through the board, but you will gain so much by having the instructor and others critique your work.
See the course description and syllabus for more details:
https://education.gale.com/l-boli79588/online-courses/drawing-for-absolute-beginner
The next session starts May 15, give it a chance if you have any inclination of becoming an artist or becoming a better artist.
Recommended Books
Read this if you want to be great at drawing by Selwyn Leamy
741.2 LEA
You can sketch : a step-by-step guide for absolute beginners by Jackie Simmonds
741.2 SIM
Notes
https://www.twitch.tv/bobross – Bob Ross on tap, forever. I do not take responsibility for anything you see in the comments.
https://drawabox.com/ – If you feel like jumping into another course, check out Draw A Box. While there isn’t an instructor, you can submit your work for review on the subreddit or Discord server for the course.
April is National Poetry Month. Introduced in 1996 and organized by the Academy of American Poets, National Poetry Month is a celebration of poetry as a way to increase awareness and appreciation of poetry in the United States. The Academy of American Poets’ website Poets.org serves as a hub for information about local poetry events during the month. The organization also provides free educational resources for teachers in classroom celebrations and activities, and also commissions an annual festival poster.
The Fountaindale Public Library is proud to present in celebration of National Poetry Month a plethora of books to choose from as well as a smattering of DVDs and CDs that take a look at all aspects of this unique and wonderful art form.
Here is a sampling of some of the titles that await you:
So, come on in and celebrate the art as well as the poets who have contributed immensely to the creative foundation of Poetry.
-Brian
A family of four travels to Santa Cruz for their annual summer vacation at the mothers childhood home. After an interesting day at the beach where they connect with friends the family heads home. That night they find themselves under siege by four individuals, all of whom are identical to themselves.
In an era where the horror genre is over saturated with sequels, remakes, and spinoffs, Us is a welcome breath of fresh air. Director Jordan Peele does it again as he makes a unique horror film that sets itself apart from the competition. Us is a great film. The acting is top-notch from all of the characters. Each of the family members plays their counterpart as well, giving opportunity to show range. Actress Lupita Nyong’o really displays her acting chops as she portrays main character Adelaide and her doppelgänger Red. My favorite character in the movie was Red and her dynamic with Adelaide. Red is believed to be the villain when it’s revealed that she had her life stolen from her by Adelaide who is actually the copy. The attention to detail with the lives of the two women was great. Red, having been a little girl before being forced to live underground hasn’t had the chance to use her speech in decades since none of the other copies are capable of speech. The first time in years that she speaks is when she’s sitting across from Adelaide, her voice is broken, harsh, and pained. With Adelaide, I liked how she’s shown to still be compassionate about the lives of Reds family because they’re copies just like she is even though she didn’t raise them.
The story is great up to around the third act where things become confusing. After the initial scuffle with their copies, Adelaide’s family flees to their friend’s house and we see their friends family killed in their home by their copies. This is where the movie reveals that everyone has a copy of themselves who’s out for blood and it’s kind of where things start to get a little iffy plot wise. The copies are a result of a long abandoned government experiment underground in which they were looking to find a way to control the original humans above. As explained in the movie, the clones and originals were linked or tethered because although the experiment could duplicate the body, it couldn’t do the same for the soul, resulting in the originals and the copies being tethered to each other as they are sharing a soul. As a result, the copies would be forced to mimic the actions of the originals above ground. For example, there are people riding a roller coaster on the surface, underground we see a group of tethers mimic the movements of their counterparts as if they were riding a roller coaster as well. This connection complicates things because it doesn’t explain how the connection is broken allowing all the copies to leave the tunnels and kill their counterparts. The copies are being forced into the mimicking actions against their will, as Red explains, they’re even forced to have families with other copies simply because their counterpart does. It’s possible that somewhere down the line the copies figure out how to break this tether, but that isn’t really explained in the movie.
Overall, Us is a great movie. It manages to bring new concepts and ideas to the horror genre and executes them well enough. The acting is superb, especially from the main actress. The story is also good and orginal. Although, the second half of the film makes things a bit confusing, it’s still an enjoyable experience.
8/10
-Andre
A King falls ill and it’s expected he will die, leaving his only son to take power after him. Unfortunately the evil Queen and her father will do everything that they can to ensure that power falls to into their hands no matter the consequences to the region.
In an era saturated by zombie movies and TV shows, Kingdom was a breath of fresh air. Some shows focus too much on the drama aspect while the horror takes a back seat which can lead to things being slow and boring. Or maybe they focus entirely on the zombies leaving it with a dumbed down plot with underdeveloped characters. Kingdom manages to balance drama and horror excellently as well as develop its characters competently.
What I liked most about the series was the setting, taking place in the past adds a whole new dimension to the genre. Being in the past the characters are limited in what they can use to defend themselves against the zombies. Characters spend most of their time on foot being equipped with only the most basic of weapons against a horde of fast moving zombies. As with Train to Busan the zombies in this are fast and exciting, they swarm quickly and those killed by them are quickly resurrected in seconds. There are also cleverly used moments of humor sprinkled throughout. My favorite was a scene where two guys are in jail together and they were locked together in a stockade like device by the neck. Zombies surround their cell and one of the men gets bitten and turns into a zombie while the other guy doesn’t. The survivor then spends the entire night attempting to avoid being pushed against the gates of the cell as his dead cellmate continues to pursue him.
Kingdom is an excellent new series and welcome addition to the zombie genre. It’s got a solid plot, top-notch acting, and genuinely creepy scenes that set it apart from similar zombie shows.
9/10
-Andre
Netflix’s The Umbrella Academy is the networks newest comic book superhero series. Following a mysterious unexplained phenomenon in 1989, forty-three previously not pregnant women across the world spontaneously give birth at the same time. Seven of these babies are adopted by eccentric billionaire Reginald Hargreeves as he founds the Umbrella Academy with the intent to train them to save the world from a coming apocalyptic event.
Hargreeves unfortunately, isn’t the best caregiver and his detached and uncaring personality leads to the children growing into very dysfunctional adults. Each has their own problems and personal demons to overcome as they’re reunited for the first time in years following Hargreeves unexpected death.
It’s a series that combines good story writing, character development, and visuals. It’s not your typical costumed superheroes beating up bad guys schtick. It’s a broken family who happens to have super powers struggling to overcome their differences and their past to save the world together. It’s a new and welcome addition to Netflix’s take on superhero TV shows and I hope for similar ventures in the future that bring to life more comics outside of DC and Marvel characters.
8/10
-Andre
X Meets Y Club Blog 