LibraryRunner

Now that finals is about over, we can relax and read something for fun!  Here are a few new titles you might like to track down.  See if you can pick them up at your friendly neighborhood public library, since you can only check out books from Butte if you're taking a class.

Opposite of Always by Justin A. Reynolds

Debut author Justin A. Reynolds delivers a hilarious and heartfelt novel about the choices we make, the people we choose, and the moments that make a life worth reliving.  When Jack and Kate meet at a party, bonding until sunrise over their mutual love of Froot Loops and their favorite flicks, Jack knows he's falling--hard. Soon she's meeting his best friends, Jillian and Franny, and Kate wins them over as easily as she did Jack. But then Kate dies. And their story should end there. Yet Kate's death sends Jack back to the beginning, the moment they first meet, and Kate's there again. Healthy, happy, and charming as ever. Jack isn't sure if he's losing his mind. Still, if he has a chance to prevent Kate's death, he'll take it. Even if that means believing in time travel. However, Jack will learn that his actions are not without consequences. And when one choice turns deadly for someone else close to him, he has to figure out what he's willing to do to save the people he loves.

 

Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James

In Marlon James's Dark Star trilogy, myth, fantasy, and history come together to explore what happens when a mercenary is hired to find a missing child. Tracker is known far and wide for his skills as a hunter: "He has a nose," people say. Engaged to track down a mysterious boy who disappeared three years earlier, Tracker breaks his own rule of always working alone when he finds himself part of a group that comes together to search for the boy. The band is a hodgepodge, full of unusual characters with secrets of their own, including a shape-shifting man-animal known as Leopard. As Tracker follows the boy's scent--from one ancient city to another; into dense forests and across deep rivers--he and the band are set upon by creatures intent on destroying them. As he struggles to survive, Tracker starts to wonder: Who, really, is this boy? Why has he been missing for so long? Why do so many people want to keep Tracker from finding him? And perhaps the most important questions of all: Who is telling the truth, and who is lying?

 

The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides

The Silent Patient is a shocking psychological thriller of a woman's act of violence against her husband--and of the therapist obsessed with uncovering her motive. Alicia Berenson's life is seemingly perfect. A famous painter married to an in-demand fashion photographer, she lives in a grand house with big windows overlooking a park in one of London's most desirable areas. One evening her husband Gabriel returns home late from a fashion shoot, and Alicia shoots him five times in the face, and then never speaks another word. Alicia's refusal to talk, or give any kind of explanation, turns a domestic tragedy into something far grander, a mystery that captures the public imagination and casts Alicia into notoriety. The price of her art skyrockets, and she, the silent patient, is hidden away from the tabloids and spotlight at the Grove, a secure forensic unit in North London. Theo Faber is a criminal psychotherapist who has waited a long time for the opportunity to work with Alicia. His determination to get her to talk and unravel the mystery of why she shot her husband takes him down a twisting path into his own motivations--a search for the truth that threatens to consume him....

 

Give Me Your Hand by Megan Abbott

You told each other everything. Then she told you too much. Kit has risen to the top of her profession and is on the brink of achieving everything she wanted. She hasn’t let anything stop her. But now someone else is standing in her way – Diane. Best friends at seventeen, their shared ambition made them inseparable. Until the day Diane told Kit her secret – the worst thing she’d ever done, the worst thing Kit could imagine – and it blew their friendship apart. Kit is still the only person who knows what Diane did. And now Diane knows something about Kit that could destroy everything she’s worked so hard for. How far would Kit go, to make the hard work, the sacrifice, worth it in the end? What wouldn’t she give up? Diane thinks Kit is just like her. Maybe she’s right. Ambition: it’s in the blood . . .

 

Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams

Bridget Jones's Diary meets Americanah in this disarmingly honest, boldly political, and truly inclusive novel that will speak to anyone who has gone looking for love and found something very different in its place. Queenie Jenkins is a 25-year-old Jamaican British woman living in London, straddling two cultures and slotting neatly into neither. She works at a national newspaper, where she's constantly forced to compare herself to her white middle class peers. After a messy break up from her long-term white boyfriend, Queenie seeks comfort in all the wrong places...including several hazardous men who do a good job of occupying brain space and a bad job of affirming self-worth. As Queenie careens from one questionable decision to another, she finds herself wondering, "What are you doing? Why are you doing it? Who do you want to be?"--all of the questions today's woman must face in a world trying to answer them for her.

 

Red, White and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston

What happens when America's First Son falls in love with the Prince of Wales? When his mother became President, Alex Claremont-Diaz was promptly cast as the American equivalent of a young royal. Handsome, charismatic, genius--his image is pure millennial-marketing gold for the White House. There's only one problem: Alex has a beef with the actual prince, Henry, across the pond. And when the tabloids get hold of a photo involving an Alex-Henry altercation, U.S./British relations take a turn for the worse. Heads of family, state, and other handlers devise a plan for damage control: staging a truce between the two rivals. What at first begins as a fake, Instragramable friendship grows deeper, and more dangerous, than either Alex or Henry could have imagined. Soon Alex finds himself hurtling into a secret romance with a surprisingly unstuffy Henry that could derail the campaign and upend two nations and begs the question: Can love save the world after all? Where do we find the courage, and the power, to be the people we are meant to be? And how can we learn to let our true colors shine through?

 

The Perfect Fraud by Ellen LaCorte

In this propulsive debut thriller, two women with deep secrets are thrown together by an unexpected meeting that plunges both their lives into chaos. But it's a sick little girl whose fate hangs in the balance. Motherhood is tough. But then, so is daughterhood. When we first meet Claire, she's living in Sedona, Arizona with her boyfriend Cal and ducking calls from her mother.  Her mom is a world class psychic on the East Coast and Claire doesn't want her to discover the truth. Claire works in the family business and calls herself a psychic, but she doesn't really have "the gift" and hasn't for a long time. She's a fraud. Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, Rena, a young mother, has family issues of her own. She's divorced and her four-year-old daughter, Stephanie, suffers from mysterious, seemingly incurable stomach problems. No matter how many specialists Rena drags her to, no matter how many mommy-blog posts she makes about her child's health issues, trying to get help and support from her online community, Stephanie only gets sicker. When Claire and Rena meet by chance on an airplane, their carefully constructed lives begin to explode.

The library is a great place to study for finals. We will be open regular hours all week. 

Do you still need to register for a class or two? Did you know that Butte College offers classes with zero textbook cost? When searching for classes in the class schedule look for the zero textbook cost (ZTC) logo. This logo means you won't have to pay for your textbook as the instructor has chosen free materials. 

Here is the logo as it appears in the class schedule: 

Students can find out more information by viewing the Zero Textbook Cost Courses Guide. Faculty can learn more by viewing the OER/ZTC Faculty Guide. 

Looking for a quite place to study for finals? The third floor of the library is the quiet floor with group study rooms you can book online. If you need a place to plug in and charge your devices, try the bright and airy first floor. The second floor (entrance level) is where you will find all the help and computers you need. Ask a reference librarian for research help, or use one of the computers in the lab. 

We will also have a limited amount of study supplies for students to use such as post it notes, pencils, and note cards. Drop by and grab some now, through finals week. 

Finals will be upon us all too soon.  Getting a group together and spending some time in one of the Library's group study rooms is a great way to work on a project or prepare for an exam!  These rooms are very popular, so it's a good idea to reserve one ahead of time if you want some serious study time for your group.  If you have a group and you're on campus, you can also just come by and ask if a spot is available.

Will the Library be open when you want to visit?  Find library hours and a calendar here.

The Chico Center has study rooms with smart technology; you can reserve a space by calling the CHC Library Information line at 530-879-4366.

The Main Library study rooms are on the third floor, where quiet reigns.  Use this online schedule to see what's available and reserve a spot, even a few days in advance.  It's easy to reserve a room from your phone or device.

Questions?  You can find the policies for the study rooms here.

Image by StockSnap from Pixabay

Check out an exciting biography or memoir carefully selected by Butte College staff and librarians. Our displays (Main Campus and Chico Center) will be up for another few weeks so come by and see it before it is gone. 

When you write a paper or give a presentation, it's important for your audience to know the sources you used; they may want to learn more about the topic or investigate deeper into what you said. You therefore need to provide citations that describe your sources. Your citations must be clear and easy to understand, and should provide all the information necessary to a reader. There are several citation systems, each one is adapted to the needs of the branch of learning that uses it. 

There are three citation systems in common use at Butte College, and we've written handy guides for you to use:

• MLA Style is generally used in the humanities
• APA Style mostly shows up in social sciences
• Chicago Style was developed for non-academic writers and journalists; it's general purpose

These styles govern not only the format of citations, but of every aspect of a written document, such as margins, spacing, what goes on the title page, and so on -- though the citations are the tricky part!

Citations are now easier than ever, because the library catalog and nearly all our databases will produce citations for you. When you find a book or article you want to use, look around the screen for a button that says "Cite" or that shows quotation marks -- usually at the right or the top of the screen. You will get a choice of citation styles and the database will produce it for you! It's important to make sure that the information is correct and complete, but this function takes most of the difficulty out of writing citations. 

There are also online services that will collect citations and organize them for you. The best we have found so far is MyBib, which is free and lets you set up a folder for each project. Just select what kind of a resource it is (book, article, video...) and put in the title and as much information as you have. MyBib will usually be able to come up with the rest, although as always it's important to check for correctness.

For further information, we recommend perusing the Purdue OWL website or checking out the handbooks for each style:

MLA Handbook by The Modern Language Association of America

Call Number: LB2369 .G53 2016

 

 

 

 

 

Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association by American Psychological Association Staff

Call Number: BF76.7 .P83 2010

 

 

 

 

 

The Chicago Manual of Style, 17th ed. by University of Chicago Press Editorial Staff

Call Number: Z253 .U69 2017

ISBN: 9780226287058