Start Your Resolution at Des Plaines Public Library

One last holiday stands between us and the end of the holiday season (not to mention year). As per usual, as we plan our parties and festivities for New Year's Eve we simultaneously plan to change our lives the very next day. New Year's resolutions though dubious are commonplace. Just check out this current list of the most common resolutions this year.

worldofcalvinandhobbes.blogspot.com

While I can't promise you will stick to your resolution(s), the library is here to help with tons of information to keep you on track! Here are some popular resolutions and links to items (books, ebooks, DVDs, audiobooks) we have to help give you a kick start. Just place a hold on the items in the catalog or give us a call and we can place the hold for you.

Losing Weight

Managing Personal Finances

Managing Stress 

Manage Time Effectively 

Developing Healthy Eating Habits

Landing the Job

Green Living

Start Volunteering  

In addition to these guides, the Reader Services department will have a display of inspiring fictional characters to help keep you on track!  Do you have a resolution this year or fictional character who inspires you?

Film Rx: Movies to Watch When You're Sick

It seems like everyone around me is sick right now. It's probably only a third of the people I work, play, and live with, but either way, that's a lot of folks lately who are stuck in bed, huddled under blankets, littering the floor with wadded tissues, and hoping to take their minds off their ills. If that sounds like you, send a friend over to the library to pick up your film Rx.

Movies have healing properties. They affect our moods. The right one can make us feel better. And recovery is often as much a psychological process as it is physical one. So any film that is familiar enough to fall asleep to and not too much of a thinker or a downer is just what the doctor ordered.

A friend of mine said he couldn't name a specific title because he'd want to use his sick time to catch up on all the movies he hasn't seen yet. That's a valid point. But as for me, when I'm sick, I can't focus and I don't want to multitask. I want my old favorites around me: my mug, my robe, my recliner, and my movies.

Most of the picks below will probably peg me as a child of the eighties, but it's really the genres that are important -- prescribing the right remedy to match what you're going through and what you need.

Classic call-in flicks:

Princess Bride
Ferris Bueller's Day Off

Sick over the holidays:

Elf or Home Alone
Love Actually or It's a Wonderful Life

Too sick to follow a plot:

Top Hat or Viva Las Vegas
Overboard or Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

It hurts when I laugh:

History of the World, Part 1 or A Night at the Opera
Caddyshack or Wayne's World

I want my mommy:

Tangled or Finding Nemo
Mary Poppins or The NeverEnding Story

Long term care:

All 3 Lord of the Rings or all 3 original Star Wars
All 3 Back to the Futures or all 3 Godfathers

On the mend:

Star Trek: Wrath of Khan or Top Gun
The Thin Man or O Brother Where Art Thou

Which movies do you want to watch when you're home sick?

A Very Literary Film Season

Sometimes there seem to be months on end with nothing I am interested in seeing being in theatres. Then, as if the clouds suddenly burst after a long drought, there is a flood of movies I’ve been dying to see. Not surprisingly, this often happens right around Christmas. And this year, it seems like almost all of those movies are based on some of my favorite books. 

While every year Hollywood releases a slew of movies based on popular books, it strikes me this season that there are more movies based not only on popular novels like the Jack Reacher series by Lee Child, but on deeply important and classic works like Les Misérables and Anna Karenina. Moviemakers also seem to be trying to use these classic stories to experiment with new film formats (as Peter Jackson has done by shooting The Hobbit in a higher frame rate and in real 3D, using a two-camera technique), different ways of recording singing in order to allow the actors to, well, act more in their songs (as in the upcoming Les Misérables) and unique, metaphoric settings (as Joe Wright has done with his new adaptation of Anna Karenina, emphasizing the theme of “all the world’s a stage”). Whether or not this makes for a better movie is up in the air, but it certainly is interesting to see how these techniques are used.

So far, I’ve checked off Anna Karenina and The Hobbit from my list of must-see literary movies this season. Still left to go is Life of Pi and Les Misérables. What’s on your list?