Website(s) of the week

Think you have a pretty amazing life story? Why not write your story for all the world to see! Ourstory.com is a great service that makes your life story into a timeline complete with pictures, videos and more. You can even have your friends and family members help you tell your story. Check out my simple and short story below. If you're into it, try the delicious tags to the right to find more fun tools.



Start your own timeline at OurStory.com

Website(s) of the week

Website of the week: online mixtape sites
(for more music sites, click on the word 'music' in the delicious tags to the right)

When I was a kid, making a mixed tape (especially off the radio) was a painstaking process involving lots of stop, record, rewind...ugh. By college, things had gotten easier with mix CDs and in the past few years CDs have all but disappeared and now we make playlists for mp3 players like ipods.

Meet the newest evolution of the mix tape: online mix tapes.

Muxtape.com and Mixwit.com are sites that allow you to create your own 'mixtape' and then share it with your friends through MySpace, Facebook or even here on Blogger. Of course you can also just send your friends a link to your mix (muxtape allows you to do this). So far mixwit is considered legal (they've worked out licensing deals), but muxtape is a bit murkier.

Here's a short mixtape from Mixwit:

First TAG Show Podcast!

It took me a few tries to get it right; sorry it was messed up before!

Drum roll please...here is the TAG Show!



Or go to the Switchpod page to hear our podcast!

Here's how we made it:

1) Download Audacity
2) Download LAME (instructions here) so you can turn your .aup file into a .mp3
3) Create an account on Switchpod (click 'Register' and register for a Podcaster account)
4) Go to your 'Control Panel' and click 'Upload Now' to upload your .mp3 file
5) Use the tools on Switchpod to 'Get a List Player' like ours above or publicize the podcast to iTunes, etc.

It's really pretty easy!

New books!

J Fiction:

Bird Lake Moon by Kevin Henkes
Confessions of a Serial Kisser by Wendelin Van Draanen
100 Cupboards by N.D. Wilson

YA Fiction:

Me, the Missing and the Dead by Jenny Valentine
Sunrise Over Fallujah by Walter Dean Myers
How to be Bad by e. lockhart, Sarah Mlynowski, Lauren Myracle
The Market by J.M. Steele

Science Fiction:

Evil Genius by Catherine Jinks
The Gravity Keeper by Simon Bloom

Surfing the Web video

Our first TAG video! Watch it here or go to YouTube to watch it.

New books!

Fiction and SciFi
First Shot by Walter Sorrells
The Host by Stephenie Meyer
Lucky by Rachel Vail
Skin Hunter by Kathleen Duey
FrostBite (A Vampire Academy Novel) by Richelle Mead
Borderline by Bonnie Rozanski

Graphic Novels
A Nightmare on Elm Street by Dixon/West/Almond
Laika by Abadeis

The Host by Stephenie Myers

Stephenie Myers is best known for her Twilight series for teens. The love triangle between Bella, Edward and Jacob (go Jacob!!) is exciting and engaging. I've loved all of her books so far and often find myself reading late into the night to finish them.

The same has so far been true for her newest book. The Host, which is marketed to adults, but is definitely appropriate for teens (so far) is Myers' first book outside of the Twilight series. In the book an alien species called 'souls' has taken over earth and possessed almost all humans body-snatcher style. The souls are implanted in the brain and completely take over the body...most of the time. The book is told from the perspective of Wanderer, a soul who has already traveled to nine planets. Wanderer has been implanted in Melanie's brain, but Melanie hasn't disappeared. In fact, Wanderer and Melanie are co-existing and Melanie slowly exerts her control. Eventually they find their way to an enclave of humans who have escaped implantation and are living underground out west. The humans, who know Melanie, immediately know Melanie is no longer herself. But they are merciful and although there is conflict, Wanderer/Melanie becomes a part of their world. Besides all of this, there is also a bit of a love triangle...but I don't want to give anything more away so I'll save that for you to find out on your own.

So far (page 265 out of 600 as of now), this book is completely absorbing the same way all the rest of Stephenie Myers' books have been. If you want to read it, be sure to put it on hold as soon as possible!

UPDATE: It only took 48 hours to finish the book and I loved it. I think I liked it more than any of the books in the Twilight series. It really was that good!

Meeting minutes

Great meeting today, everyone! I'll get those pen pal letters out and we should have responses soon. We're coming along with our podcast and vodcast scripts...let's try to start recording at our next meeting! Also, get ready for our first game night in June. Hooray!

See you next Thursday, May 15th at 4 p.m.!

Storytubes!

Go to the Storytubes website to vote for the best video of the week! This week's videos are about Hair Raising Tales...

Books to Movies

With the next Chronicles of Narnia movie coming out this weekend, Prince Caspian, it got me thinking...what are your favorite books-to-movies adaptations?

Do you love the Harry Potter films but hate The Golden Compass? Here are some resources for those of you who are interested in the longstanding books-to-movies trend...

Entertainment Weekly's Read the Book! Slideshow
Do you agree with EW?? I kind of liked Prozac Nation...

Books to Movies Database
Want to know if your favorite author has had any of his/her books turned into movies? This is the place to go.

Books into Movies from Teenreads.com

Here's the trailer for Prince Caspian, too...

New Poll!

Turns out we like walking outside best of all in good weather.

There's a new poll up...what's your favorite website for online games? You can choose several if you can't narrow it down to one. If you have other favorite websites that aren't listed in the poll, put them in the comments!!!

All the websites listed in the poll are in the del.icio.us tags, too. Just click on the word games off to the right and start exploring!

MySpace and Facebook

Did you know that the library has a Facebook page and a MySpace page?

It's true! Make the library your friend today.