From Flavorwire: Science Fiction’s Worst Planets to Live On

http://www.flavorwire.com/293147/science-fictions-10-worst-planets-to-live-on

Everyone loves the idea of traveling to faraway planets and hanging out with aliens, right? Science fiction is such a cool genre — there’s spaceships and jet packs and lightsabers and sexy green women and a guy who travels through time in a phone booth! It’s not all it’s cracked up to be, though, when you start to actually think about the type of planets you see in sci-fi stories…

Ursa Minor Beta

Speaking of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, why’s Ursa Minor Beta such an awful place? Well, as Douglas Adams notes, ”although it is excruciatingly rich, horrifyingly sunny and more full of wonderfully exciting people than a pomegranate is of pips, it can hardly be insignificant that when a recent edition of Playbeing Magazine headlined an article with the words, ‘When you are tired of Ursa Minor Beta you are tired of life,’ the suicide rate there quadrupled overnight.” Yikes. So sort of like Beverly Hills, then?

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Miranda

Miranda might have been sort of a nice place when it was first terriformed by the Alliance in Firefly and Serenity. But then the government decided to experiment with a chemical that was supposed to curb aggression in the planet’s population. What it did instead was make almost everyone so docile that they all stopped moving and slowly died of, well, all the things you die of when you can’t even make the effort to turn your head slightly. The people who weren’t “almost everyone?” They became horrifying monsters who mutilated themselves and raped, killed, and skinned people across the galaxy for no good reason. Not a fun time for anybody, if you ask us.

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Tatooine

Sure, the double sunset must be nice to look at, but you know what two suns means? It’s twice as hot. That’s why the whole planet’s a desert. Seriously, it’s so hot that people have to harvest moisture on farms. Also, slavery is legal, anybody can shoot anyone else they feel like (which is fine when it’s Han shooting Greedo, but not when it’s someone shooting you), and then there are the Sarlaac pits!

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Arrakis

For the uninitiated, Arrakis from Dune is like Tatooine in that the weather is impossibly oppressive, to the point where there is no naturally occurring precipitation – water has to be imported. Also, GIANT SAND WORMS. The only reason anybody lives on it at all is to harvest Melange, a drug that can increase the life span of its user. You know what? If we had to live on a planet filled with sand worms for the rest of our unnaturally long lives, we’d rather just die young, thanks.

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Saving CeeCee Honeycutt, by Beth Hoffman

CeeCee, a young adolescent, becomes the “adult” her mom has to count on when her dad basically abandons them both when times get hard. CeeCee’s mom is dealing with bipolar and schizophrenia disorders, and her dad cannot take the emotional toll her diseases puts on him so he stays away on business trips.

Eventually, the diseases have a tragic end for CeeCee’s mom, and CeeCee is forced to move to Savannah, Georgia with her Aunt Tootie, whom she has never met. Moving to Savannah, CeeCee meets a collection of very eccentric and proud southern women.

These women, through their own experience and knowledge show CeeCee that life is always going to have problems, but it is ultimately up to you how you decide to deal with them. These different women eventually give CeeCee two things that she never had: a family and a childhood.

This is one of the best novels that I have ever read.

Reviewed by a staff member, First Regional Library

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Ruby Redfort, Look Into My Eyes, by Lauren Child

Children’s author Lauren Child has written a Young Adult book about one of the popular characters in her Clarice Bean series – Ruby Redfort.

Ruby Redfort, Look Into My Eyes is a combination Harriet the Spy, NCIS and Nancy Drew. Armed with mega smarts and sly wit, Ruby runs circles around her rather dim parents and is backed by her faithful pal Clancy. Winning the Junior Code Creator Competition, Ruby finds herself recruited by Spectrum, the “good guys” spy service. A secret code must be found to solve a secret agent’s murder and prevent the theft of a rare jade Buddha.

It is rumored that whoever looks into the Buddha’s eyes at midnight on New Year’s Eve will have eternal life. When a gang of international bad guys, led by a Dracula wannabe, targets the jade Buddha – it is up to Ruby, Clancy and Ruby’s Spectrum “babysitter” Hitch – to save the Buddha and rescue the world from evil.

Ruby Redfort, Look Into My Eyes is a fast and superbly entertaining read. Look for more Ruby Redfort adventures – hopefully soon.

Reviewed by a staff member, First Regional Library

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A Game of Thrones: The Graphic Novel, by George R R Martin

The Stark family of Winterfell faces the challenges of generations of year long winters.  In this wintery land, there are seven regions.  Each region has its own self proclaimed King, who wants to become the King of all and sit on the Iron Throne.  The Stark family faces plots from their rivals, the Lannisters, along with challenges of the Neverborn demons and the arrival of barbarian hordes.

This is the first volume of George R.R. Martin's epic fantasy saga and combines romance, action, fantasy and mystery.

Reading the thick book this graphic novel was based on, would have intimated me.  By reading this book in this format, it helped me to understand the storyline and I just loved all the graphic pictures. 

Reviewed by a staff member, First Regional Library

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Book Club Kits

Book Club Kits

First Regional Library has quite a few book club kits to use in your book club.  These kits contain 10 physical copies of the book and four e-readers that contain copies of the book.

Adults can request and check these out at any First Regional Library branch.

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Leaving Gee’s Bend, by Irene Latham

There is a divide between Ludephia’s beloved Gee’s Bend and the “big city” of Camden.  Of course the whites around town see the divide as the river, but Ludephia is about to meet its racial divide first hand.

Eventually, Ludephia must cross that river in order to save her family, and she finds comfort and personal understanding in “pulling stitches”.  But no matter how many stitches she pulls through those scraps of fabric, Ludelphia must come to realize that not everyone wants her to succeed in finding the doctor who will save her Momma and not everyone who comes to Gee’s bend is there to help.   Like when the Boss’s wife sends her men to collect what Gee’s Bend owes her late husband, and Ludelphia must then return to Gee’s Bend to warn them before she takes everything.

 Based on the actual town of Gee’s Bend this novel is a great starter for other fiction, non-fiction and even children’s books about the Gee’s Bend Quilters, the mules from Gee’s bend and the personal connection this wonderful town shares with Martin Luther King Jr. 

Irene Latham has visited the Lafayette County/Oxford Public Library Books’N Lunch.  The historical quilts that formed this community have been displayed in the University Museum in Oxford.  The granddaughters of the original quilters have sung on Thacker Mountain Radio.

Reviewed by a staff member, First Regional Library

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Morning Glory, by LaVyrle Spencer

In Georgia just before World War II, Ellie Dinsmore, a pregnant widow with two small boys places an ad for a husband in the local newspaper. Ex-convict Will Parker answers her ad.

This is how two lonely people meet on Ellie’s run down farm, and eventually fall in love. Author LaVyrle Spencer develops the characters and tells a wonderful story, about a couple who have been shunned by society, separated by war, survived through a false accusation of murder, and eventually find the love they have needed for so long.

Reviewed by a staff member, First Regional Library

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