New & Novel: Wellness

We're already most of the way through January - how are those New Year's resolutions going? We're on the fence about resolutions. If they help you, great; if they make you feel bad for not being able to fulfill your goals, that's not so great. So, we'd like to gently open up a discussion about new wellness books. Not diet and exercise, not even health and fitness, but wellness. There are some books on our list that include diet and exercise, but we've tried not to make them the be-all and end-all of the discussion, because we want you to be healthy, not (necessarily) skinny; we want you to feel like a life change is within reach, but can include baby steps to get there, and should involve your mind as much as your body. How'd we do? Let us know in the comments!

Eat Fat, Get Thin: Why the Fat We Eat Is the Key to Sustained Weight Loss and Vibrant Health by  Mark Hyman, MD

Forever Painless: End Chronic Pain and Reclaim Your Life in 30 Minutes a Day by Miranda Esmonde-White 

Change Your Brain, Change Your life: The Breakthrough Program For Conquering Anxiety, Depression, Obsessiveness, Lack of Focus, Anger, and Memory Problems by Daniel G. Amen, M.D. 

But I Could Never Go Vegan!: 125 Recipes That Prove You Can Live Without Cheese, It's Not All Rabbit Food, and Your Friends Will Still Come Over For Dinner by Kristy Turner 

The Bulletproof Diet: Lose Up To a Pound a Day, Reclaim Your Energy and Focus, and Upgrade Your Life by Dave Asprey

Zero Sugar Diet: Eat Carbs, Crush Cravings, and Drop Up to 14 Pounds in 14 Days! by David Zinczenko

The Nalini Method: Transform Your Mind and Body - 7 Workouts for 7 Moods by Rupa Mehta

Retox: Yoga, Food, Attitude - Healthy Solutions For Real Life by Lauren Imparato

Aim True: Love Your Body, Eat Without Fear, Nourish Your Spirit, Discover True Balance! by Kathryn Budig 

Bowl: Vegetarian Recipes For Ramen, Pho, Bibimbap, Dumplings, and Other One-Dish Meals by Lukas Volger 

Deliciously Ella Every Day: Quick and Easy Recipes For Gluten-Free Snacks, Packed Lunches and Simple Meals by Ella Woodward

The Prime: Prepare and Repair Your Body For Spontaneous Weight Loss by Kulreet Chaudhary, MD; with Eve Adamson

The Sleep Revolution: Transforming Your Life, One Night At a Time by Arianna Huffington 

Eat Dirt: Why Leaky Gut May Be the Root Cause of Your Health Problems and 5 Surprising Steps to Cure It by Dr. Josh Axe 

A Mind of Your Own: The Truth About Depression and How Women Can Heal Their Bodies to Reclaim Their Lives; Featuring a 30-Day Plan For Transformation by Kelly Brogan, MD, with Kristin Loberg 

Wellth: How I Learned to Build a Life, Not a Résumé by Jason Wachob, founder and CEO of mindbodygreen 

The Ketogenic Cookbook: Nutritious Low-Carb, High-Fat Paleo Meals to Heal Your Body by Jimmy Moore and Maria Emmerich 

The Secret Life of Fat: The Science Behind the Body's Least Understood Organ and What It Means For You by Sylvia Tara, PhD.  

Urban Monk: Eastern Wisdom and Modern Hacks That Will Help You Find Peace, Happiness, and... Success in Today's World by Pedram Shojai  

Bone Deep Broth: Healing Recipes With Bone Broth by Taylor Chen & Lya Mojica 

Strong Is the New Beautiful: Embrace Your Natural Beauty, Eat Clean, and Harness Your Power by Lindsey Vonn and Sarah Toland

Don't Let Anything Dull Your Sparkle: How to Break Free of Negativity and Drama by Doreen Virtue [eBook]

 

The Multi-Faceted Nick Cave

"At the end of the 20th Century, I ceased to be a human being. I wake, I write, I eat, I watch TV...I'm a cannibal - looking for someone to cook in a pot."
~Nick Cave, 20,000 Days on Earth 

We'd like to put forth the claim that Australian musician Nick Cave is a polymath (he's been called "the renaissance man of the “postpunk” generation"); if not that, you have to admit, he's one of the harder-working men in show biz. He writes and plays music (with more than one band - 16 albums with the Bad Seeds, movie soundtracks with Warren Ellis, and is part of Grinderman), writes novels and screenplays, and has acted (as himself, sort of) in movies. "Commited Cave divers" (his fans have some wacky names) will not be disappointed by his prodigious output.

Cave's work is not for everyone - he's been called "too dark, too alternately demonic or densely romantic; too literate, strange and grandiose" as he writes about some of his favorite themes, "[l]ove, violence, death and America." We ourselves are latecomers to his oeuvre - he started out in The Boys Next Door in 1977 (later to morph into the Birthday Party in 1980), and started up the Bad Seeds in 1984 - but, apart from brief exposure to the song "Into My Arms" in the 1990s when Cave was dating PJ Harvey, we have to confess our interest was piqued first by the film 20,000 Days On Earth. Here's one of our favorite quotes from the film:

All of our days are numbered. We can not afford to be idle. To act on a bad idea is better than to not act at all because the worth of the idea never becomes apparent until you do it. Sometimes this idea can be the smallest thing in the world; a little flame that you hunch over and cup with your hand and pray will not be extinguished by all the storm that howls about it. If you can hold on to that flame, great things can be constructed around it; things that are massive and powerful and world changing. All held up by the tiniest of ideas.

The library catalog has a good sampling of Nick Cave's work, if you choose to give it a try. Whatever you do, don't miss "End Crawl" on the Lawless soundtrack! A lovely piece of instrumental music.


Albums

Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!

Murder Ballads

The Boatman's Call

Push The Sky Away

Skeleton Tree 

Grinderman


Screenplay

The Proposition


Soundtracks

Lawless [CD + DVD]

West of Memphis [DVD]

Hell or High Water [hoopla eMusic]

The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford  [CD + DVD]


Books

The Death of Bunny Munro

The Sick Bag Song


Film

cameo (with the Bad Seeds) in Wings of Desire

Johnny Suede [hoopla eVideo]

20,000 Days on Earth


For Children

one song, "Sweet Rosyanne," with Dan Zanes on Catch That Train!


Nick Cave is also participating in the "grown-up children's tales" charity book Stories for Ways and Means, and you can listen to The Wire's Andre Royo perform Cave's story "The Lonely Giant" online.

Top Circulating Graphic Novels

The Yellow Books, 1887 . Fine Art. Encyclopædia Britannica ImageQuest. Web. 18 May 2016.
http://quest.eb.com/search/108_303306/1/108_303306/cite

“Knowledge is like money: To be of value it must circulate, and in circulating it can increase in quantity and, hopefully, in value.”
― Louis L'Amour, Education of a Wandering Man  

In the library, "circulation" means a lot of things.  What's sometimes called the "library card desk" is also known as "circulation".  When we look at a book's record, we count how many times it has checked out as its "circs". The library's collection floats (items checked out at one branch and returned at another stay at the branch at which they are returned), but its items circulate.

For this month's top circulating chart, we have chosen to spotlight graphic novels! This proved to be a little bit more challenging than we originally anticipated. The list of the top circulating graphic novels would be almost entirely series and almost entirely superhero oriented,  so we opted to split up graphic novels into a couple of different categories.

Top Circulating Graphic Novel Series

1.  The Walking Dead by Robert Kirkman

2. Deadpool by Gerry Duggan

3. Star Wars by Aaron Jason

4. Justice League by Geoff Johns

5. The Sandman by Neil Gaiman

6. March by John Lewis

7. Wonder Woman by Brian Azzarello

8. Sex Criminals by Matt Fraction

9. Batman by Scott Snyder

10. Injustice by Tom Taylor

11. Suicide Squad by Adam Glass

12. Saga by Brian K. Vaughan

13. She-Hulk by Charles Soule

14. Indestructible Hulk by Mark Waid

15. Scalped by Jason Aaron

 

By "standalone," we just mean "not part of any series." Which, sadly, precluded us adding one of our favorites, Hark!: A Vagrant by Kate Beaton, which actually is circulating quite briskly for a non-superhero comic.

Top Circulating Standalone Graphic Novels

1.  Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? by Roz Chast

2. Fun Home by Alison Bechdel

3. Flying Couch by Amy Kurzweil

4. Blue Is the Warmest Color by Julie Maroh

5. The Encyclopedia of Early Earth by Isabel Greenberg

6. Bodies by Si Spencer

7. Patience by Daniel Clowes

8. Beautiful Darkness by Fabien Vehlmann

9. Everything Is Teeth by Evie Wyld

10. Aya by Marguerite Abouet

There were very few high circulation numbers for the very few manga we have catalogued as adult, so we decided to share the top circulating young adult manga instead.

Top Circulating  Young Adult Manga

1.  Naruto by Masashi Kishimoto

2. Bleach by Tite Kubo

3. Black Butler by Yana Toboso

4. Tokyo Ghoul by Sui Ishida

5. Dragon Ball Z by Akira Toriyama

6. Yu-Gi-Oh! by Kazuki Takahashi

7. Psyren  by Tokiashi Iwashiro

8. Soul Eater by Atsushi Okubo

9. Otomen by Aya Kanno

10. The Seven Deadly Sins by Nakaba Suzuki

11. Kamisama Kiss by Julietta Suzuki

12. Ouran High School Host Club by Bisco Hatori

13. Vampire Knight by Matsuri Hino

14. Nura by Hiroshi Shiibashi

15. Fruits Basket by Natsuki Takaya

If there's a particular subject you'd like to know which are the top circulating books in (in our library system), let us know in the comments!