Notes and Letters from the Library @lcclibrary - Tumblr Blog

Notes from My Captivity by Kathy Parks

Aspiring young journalist Adrienne ventures into the Siberian wilderness with her stepfather and a small expedition crew in search of a mysterious family known as the Osinovs.

Rumored to have simply vanished, most consider the idea that the Osinovs have survived deep in the Siberian forest for nearly thirty years to be a myth. Adrienne's stepfather, however, is convinced of their existence and hopes to provide irrefutable proof in order to salvage his damaged reputation as an anthropologist.

Adrienne's motives are less clear. She does not believe in the family and hopes to discredit her stepfather with an article that will secure her entry into a prestigious journalism program. When tragedy first befalls their crew, and later her stepfather, Adrienne finds herself forced to accept the help of the very people she didn't believe in. Suspenseful and utterly absorbing, this is a must read!

#book review #staff picks #Lansing Community College

Now through Oct. 31st, visit us on the 2nd floor to share how The Hate U Give impacted you and be entered to win a $25 NCG movie gift card and a copy of the #onebookonelcc 2018-2019 book!

The girl who wrote in silk by Kelli Estes

This historical novel intertwines the story of Mei Lien, a Chinese woman in 1880’s Seattle with the story of Inara, a present-day young woman who discovers an intricately embroidered silk sleeve in a house she inherited on Orca Island. The mystery written in the silk sleeve weaves together the lives of these two remarkable women. A touching, heartbreaking and compelling read!

collincollegelibraries

For many readers, seeing the film adaptations of one of their favorite books is an incredibly exciting moment, but one that comes with a lot of anxiety: How will the actors measure up to the fictional versions in their heads? Will their favorite…

These look amazing! You can find these books in your Collin Libraries.

The shift: one nurse, twelve hours, four patients’ lives by Theresa Brown

What is it like to work a 12-hour shift as an oncology nurse at an urban hospital? This engaging book is an insightful look into hospital life and today's healthcare system. It describes in vivid detail the amount of work and hectic pace of those attending to needs of patients. A must read, not only for nursing students but anyone who wants to catch a glimpse into what really goes on behind the scenes at a hospital.

#bookreviews #lcclibrary #Lansing Community College #reading

Wakanda beyond Black Panther

Best-selling authors Roxanne Gay and Ta-Nehisi Coates expand the World of Wakanda. Their new comic focuses on the female soldiers of the Dora Milaje who protect Wakanda nation and King T’Challa, better known as Black Panther.

Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine

Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: an American Lyric, is a book of poetry, memoir, and artwork that goes far beyond telling a story. It immerses the reader in the complex realities and unsettling, sometimes violent, interactions that make up the reality of being a black citizen in the United States. Rankine zooms in to the troubling conversations with some of her white colleagues, where her competence is called into question because of her race. Immediately following these moments of microaggressions, she zooms out to well-known occurrences of racial discrimination, placing the current and intimate moments in a greater historical and social narrative. This constant shifting of scope from the personal, to societal, to historical, and back again reveals the anxiety of the unequal citizenship experienced by African Americans. Not only does Rankine expose and mourn the trauma visited upon black bodies, now and throughout history, but she pushes her reader to acknowledge this reality and fight to reinforce the humanity of individuals and communities. I highly recommend reading LCC's 2018-19 One Book pick, The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, alongside this great work.

lccstars

LCC American Marketing Association chapter second in the nation

The LCC chapter of the student American Marketing Association, or AMA, was named second in the nation for a small chapter during the AMA’s April International Collegiate Conference in New Orleans.

To win the award, the 22-member chapter put together a 10-page chapter plan and a 20-page annual report outlining their events and projects. This is not the first year the chapter has won an award at the annual conference; it has been consistently among the top-placing chapters. Congratulations, students!

writerswritecompany

lccstars

Interactive career and program exploration

Explore your future at Lansing Community College! This Thursday, May 3, from 5-8 p.m., LCC is opening up its Downtown Campus for the Program and Career Showcase. This college-wide demonstration is an excellent opportunity to discover your options for academic programs and the careers for which they prepare you.

The first and most important part is registering to attend online at lcc.edu/openhouse. Registering enters you to win a $500 LCC scholarship or a pair of Beats by Dre headphones. Next, at the event, you can complete your free application to study at LCC. Applications will be accepted for the duration of the event in the Gannon Building’s StarZone and once you’ve completed your application (which takes about 10-15 minutes), you will get a free LCC T-shirt.

Then you’ll be ready for the open house, where you’ll not only be introduced to the careers and programs that fit your interests but also invited to participate in hands-on activities that will both teach you about different career fields and about how you can learn with LCC.

Here are some areas you can explore:

The Health and Human Services building hosts LCC’s state-of-the-art nursing simulation, dental hygiene clinic and offers tours of the therapeutic massage facility. Careers in nursing and health care are growing much faster than the national average, and if the many job prospects an LCC education can provide feel overwhelming, free chair massages are available just across the campus mall in the Gannon Building.

While touring the campus mall, check out LCC’s emergency services vehicles in an interactive living exhibit. Training for a career in public service not only means accelerated entry into a field with competitive benefits and excellent salaries, it also means providing safety and peace of mind for your community.

Are you interested in machinery but don’t know how you can convert your curiosity into a career? In the Gannon Commons, a mobile robotics demonstration, straight from LCC’s Center for Manufacturing Excellence, and on-site welding simulation showcase careers in Greater Lansing’s exploding manufacturing industry. Computer information technology will also on hand to demonstrate what it takes to be an IT professional in the ever-advancing technological office environment.

Discover how you can start at LCC, then transfer to another college or university to complete your bachelor’s or master’s degree. Advisors and other transfer resources will be available to answer questions you may have. You can also meet with representatives from LCC’s University Center, which hosts five of Michigan’s top universities right at LCC’s Downtown Campus.

Future students can benefit from academic advising and conversations with an LCC success coach. Success coaches ensure LCC students are on track toward their academic and career goals by connecting with instructors and student support initiatives. Meet with your success coach at the student resource fair in Gannon Building room 2214.

Presentations by the LCC advising and success coach teams will be held at 6 and 7:30 p.m. Financial aid representatives will be present to help you become part of the LCC family. Student clubs and organizations will host informative table exhibits highlighting how joining in pursuit of your interests can enhance your collegiate experience.

After applying to the college and discovering so many paths to great careers, you’ll be just about ready to appreciate some of LCC’s superlative student culture. Music and choir demonstrations continue throughout the event and, in LCC’s Blackbox Theater, performance professionals will teach stage fighting and stagecraft, including dramatic fencing. That’s right; if the prospect of training for a wonderful career in a stimulating environment hasn’t yet excited you, LCC is going to teach you about sword fighting.

The Program and Career Showcase isn’t just for those who are interested in applying to college or fast training for careers with outstanding salaries – it also features learning opportunities for kids. LCC’s youth programs will demonstrate science experiments and other STEM-related topics, and live animals will be on hand to entertain and delight our young visitors. Community education at LCC is open to one and all! Adult enrichment classes are available to community members who are excited about elevating their hobbies into passions.

Who wouldn’t want to learn about their very own exciting and lucrative future? Join LCC from 5-8 p.m. on Thursday, May 3 for the program and career showcase. Register to attend and you’ll be entered to win a $500 scholarship or a pair of Beats by Dre headphones. LCC will even give you a free t-shirt if you apply to LCC at the event, so you simply can’t lose. Come along, and bring the family to LCC’s Program and Career Showcase!

The Immortalists : A Novel

It's 1969 in New York City's Lower East Side, and word has spread of the arrival of a mystical woman, a traveling psychic who claims to be able to tell anyone the day they will die. The Gold children—four adolescents on the cusp of self-awareness—sneak out to hear their fortunes.

Their prophecies inform their next five decades. Golden-boy Simon escapes to the West Coast, searching for love in '80s San Francisco; dreamy Klara becomes a Las Vegas magician, obsessed with blurring reality and fantasy; eldest son Daniel seeks security as an army doctor post-9/11, hoping to control fate; and bookish Varya throws herself into longevity research, where she tests the boundary between science and immortality. A sweeping novel of remarkable ambition and depth, The Immortalists probes the line between destiny and choice, reality and illusion, this world and the next. It is a deeply moving testament to the power of story, the nature of belief, and the unrelenting pull of familial bonds.

Being a black woman in America means contending with old prejudices and fresh absurdities every day. Comedian Phoebe Robinson has experienced her fair share over the years: she’s been unceremoniously relegated to the role of “the black friend,” as if she is somehow the authority on all things racial; she’s been questioned about her love of U2 and Billy Joel (“isn’t that . . . white people music?”); she’s been called “uppity” for having an opinion in the workplace; she’s been followed around stores by security guards; and yes, people do ask her whether they can touch her hair all. the. time. Now, she’s ready to take these topics to the page—and she’s going to make you laugh as she’s doing it.

Using her trademark wit alongside pop-culture references galore, Robinson explores everything from why Lisa Bonet is “Queen. Bae. Jesus,” to breaking down the terrible nature of casting calls, to giving her less-than-traditional advice to the future female president, and demanding that the NFL clean up its act, all told in the same conversational voice that launched her podcast, 2 Dope Queens, to the top spot on iTunes. As personal as it is political, You Can’t Touch My Hair examines our cultural climate and skewers our biases with humor and heart, announcing Robinson as a writer on the rise.

A Brief History of Seven Killings

The name Bob Marley typically brings to mind images of laid back summer evenings and cannabis, but his popularized image, which can now be seen on the Mellow Mood products, rarely brings to popular mind post-colonial Jamaica’s political and civil unrest. In A Brief History of Seven Killings, Marlon James provides a fictionalized account of Bob Marley’s 1976 attempted assassination. Although the book is premised on that attempt, the book is more about the events leading up to and after the undertaking rather than on the singer himself. In fact, the book never refers to Marley by name, only as The Singer.

The book tells the events from multiple perspectives, including gang members protected by the two major political parties (the People’s National Party and the Jamaica Labour Party); a Rolling Stone journalist, known in the story as Alex Pierce but likely based on Cameron Crowe (remember the movie Almost Famous?); the ghost of a dead politician; CIA agents; and many more. In fact, the book writes from the perspective of 75 characters, which can be difficult for a reader to keep straight. To help, James includes a cast of characters at the beginning of the book, but readers may find it distracting to flip back and forth to remind themselves of the chapter’s character. In addition to the large cast of characters, James writes in different styles to portray the different parts. Readers may find the Jamaican dialect difficult to grasp at the beginning and some may find the different dialogues disruptive to the flow. Fans of vignettes, however, will love this book.

If readers stick through the cacophony of voices, they will be rewarded by discovering the history of post-colonial Jamaica written from the perspective of a Jamaican author. They are also likely to be astounded by James’ innovative writing style.

Highly recommended.

Awards: Winner of the 2015 Man Booker prize (James was the first Jamaican author to ever win it); Recipient of the 2015 American Book Award.

Named Book of the Year by: The New York Times; Chicago Tribune; The Washington Post; The Boston Globe; Time; Newsweek; The Huffington Post; The Seattle Times; The Houston Chronicle; Publishers Weekly; Library Journal; Popsugar; BookPage; BuzzFeed Books; Salon; Kansas City Star; and L Magazine.

If this book sparks interest in Jamaican history, the LCC library has the following books available for check out:

Lacey, Terry. Violence and politics in Jamaica, 1960-70: Internal Security in a Developing Country. Totowa, N.J.: F. Cass, 1977. Print. Catalog record: http://fish.lcc.edu/record=b1006593~S13

Mason, Peter. Jamaica: A Guide to the People, Politics, and Culture. New York: Interlink Books, 2000. Print. Catalog record: http://fish.lcc.edu/record=b1119464~S13

Moore, Brian L. and Johnson, Michele A. Neither Led nor Driven: Contesting British Cultural Imperialism in Jamaica. Kingston, Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press, 2004. ACLS Humanities E-Book. Web. 21 Oct. 2015. .Catalog record: http://fish.lcc.edu/record=b1455792~S6

Get this Bob Marley book sent to the LCC Library through MelCat:

Goldman, Vivien. The Book of Exodus: The Making and Meaning of Bob Marley and the Wailers' Album of the Century. Three Rivers Press, 2006. Print. MelCat record: http://search.mel.org/iii/encore/record/C__Rb10142376

Want to try some of the food mentioned in the book?

Island Vibes Café located in downtown Lansing (424 S Washington Sq, Lansing MI 48933) offers delicious, authentic Jamaican cuisine: Link to the menu: http://www.allmenus.com/mi/lansing/395424-island-vibes-cafe/menu/.

Try making the cuisines mentioned in the book at home with this resource from the LCC Library:

Willinksy, Helen. Jerk from Jamaica: Barbecue Caribbean Style. Berkeley: Ten Speed Press, 2007. Print. Catalog record: http://fish.lcc.edu/record=b1312631~S13

Get these books about Jamaican food sent to the LCC Library through MelCat:

DeMers, John. Authentic Recipes from Jamaica. Periplus, 2005. Print. MelCat record http://search.mel.org/iii/encore/record/C__Rb19014243

Higman, B.W. Jamaican Food: History, Biology, Culture. West Indies, Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press, 2008. Print. MelCat record: http://search.mel.org/iii/encore/record/C__Rb14595926

Helpful Study Techniques

Having a study schedule

This also helps with time management. Simply, study the same subjects for the same time each day. This will also ensure procrastination remains at a minimum.

Study in your Study Zone

When studying, make sure to have a designated study area, free of distraction. This helps you concentrate on the task at stand. Also make sure to have everything you need for your assignment, so you aren’t wasting time looking for supplies.

Keep a well organized note book

Being organized and orderly in your note taking helps keep your head organized, leading to enhanced concentration. It also makes it easy to find things you are looking for, and to review the material. Also make sure to keep careful record of assignments due. A de-cluttered mind is essential to concentration.

Reviewing material frequently

This is key if you don’t want to cram the night before your exam. The best way to learn a subject is to keep “re-learning” it. This helps with retention and keeps you from forgetting the material that you learned last week!

Take responsibility for your work

No one is forcing you to do well, and no one will babysit you to get your work done. It is up to you to do well in college. So take responsibility for your work and strive to do the best that you can do!

Resources:

http://www.csc.edu/learningcenter/study/studymethods.csc

Need help setting up your APA paper? Check out this link from the American Psychological Association or use the OWL at Purdue APA guide to learn how to set up your paper: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/

[Tori, I helped three people with this today, so it might be a good Facebook post or wherever you want to put it]

milk and honey

milk and honey is a collection of poetry that is a #1 New York Times Bestseller written by Rupi Kaur. The poems and prose share explicit and genuine experiences of love, loss, and healing from the hurt that stem from the author's own struggles.The compile of poems touches base to personal memories and generates a sense of reflection as themes about femininity, identity, and empowerment are fearlessly expressed throughout the book. Even if you may not be a fan of poetry, the writing is so smooth and seamless that you end up questioning if you have mis-perceived poetry your whole life.

Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality, by Brad Warner

What do 80's hardcore punk, Godzilla movies, and Zen Buddhism have in common? The answer is author Brad Warner, a no-nonsense ordained (if that's the term) Zen master who has made "Question Authority" a lifestyle.

This quick but surprisingly deep book is an overview of his discovery of Zen through meditation, and how it has shaped his life. At no point does he come across as evangelistic, opting instead for simple observations of what has worked for him. His anti-establishment humor pervades his writing and makes this an entertaining and potentially life-altering read.

~Brandon L. Hunt

Trending Blogs

Recently Viewed Blogs

Notes and Letters from the Library