Winner Winner Winner!!

Congratulations to Greg Warden and Katy Schmidt. They were the 2 winners in our iPod Touch giveaway! I apologize to all their friends, because Greg and Katy will be spending the next week downloading applications and playing games on their new toys.

Happy Friday!

Breaking News

We are giving away two, count 'em, two iPod Touches. Visit the Computer Department at the MSU Bookstore and take a short computer survey for your chance to win. Sadly, this awesome promotion is only available in the store. One entry per person, please.


MSU Bookstore... Awesome.

This Week's Bestsellers

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski

Born mute, speaking only in sign, Edgar Sawtelle leads an idyllic life with his new parents on their farm in remote northern Wisconsin. For generations, the Sawtelles have raised and trained a fictional breed of dog whose thoughtful companionship is epitomized by Almondine, Edgar's lifelong friend and ally. But with the unexpected return of Claude, Edgar's paternal uncle, turmoil consumes the Sawtelles' peaceful home. When Edgar's father dies suddenly, Claude insinuates himself into the life of the farm--and into Edgar's mother's affections.

Grief-stricken and bewildered, Edgar tries to prove Claude played a role in his father's death, but his plan backfires--spectacularly. Forced to flee into the vast wilderness lying beyond the farm, Edgar comes of age in the wild, fighting for his survival and that of the three yearling dogs who follow him. But his need to face his father's murderer and his devotion to the Sawtelle dogs turn Edgar ever homeward.

David Wroblewski is a master storyteller, and his breathtaking scenes--the elemental north woods, the sweep of seasons, an iconic American barn, a fateful vision rendered in the falling rain--create a riveting family saga, a brilliant exploration of the limits of language, and a compulsively readable modern classic.

Armageddon in Retrospect by Kurt Vonnegut

Armageddon in Retrospect is a collection of twelve writings by Kurt Vonnegut on two of his most important subjects: war and peace. Written over the course of a lifetime, yet never before published, these pieces represent Vonnegut's unerring opposition to violence, and his rueful assessment of humanity's endless attraction to it.

Imbued with his trademark humor, the selectoins range from a visceral nonfiction recollection of the destruction of Dresden during World War II, a piece that is as timely today as it was then; to a painfully funny short story about three privates and their fantaisies of the perfect first meal upon returning home from the war; to a darker, more poignant story about the impossibility of shielding our children from the temptations of violence. Combined, these pieces offer readers remarkable insight into Vonnegut as a soldier, writer, artist, parent, and human being striving for peace.

This stunning volume also includes a letter that Vonnegut wrote to his family informing them that he'd been taken prisoner by the Germans; his last written speech; an introduction by his son, Mark Vonnegut; as well as an assortment of his marvelous artwork--like his writing, Vonnegut's art is colorful, unexpected, alternately poignant and potently funny. A fitting tribute, and an essential contribution to the discussion of war and peace, Armageddon in Retrospect says as much about the times in which we live as it does about the genius of the writer and artist.

Inauguration Day

The radio and TV are playing the same programs, the internet is slow, and political statements are scrawled all over the sidewalk in chalk... must be Inauguration Day. Hope you are enjoying the sunshine (if you are in Bozeman) and the media coverage of the event.

This Week's Bestsellers

The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch

A lot of professors give talks titled "The Last Lecture." Professors are asked to consider their demise and to ruminate on what matters most to them. And while they speak, audiences can't help but mull the same question: What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance? If we had to vanish tomorrow, what would we want as our legacy?

When Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon, was asked to give such a lecture, he didn't have to imagine it as his last, since he had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer. But the lecture he gave--"Really Acheiving Your Childhood Dreams"--wasn't about dying. It was about the importance of overcoming obstacles, of enabling the dreams of others, of seizing every moment (because "time is all you have... and you may find one day that you have tless than you think"). It was a summation of everything Randy had come to believe. It was about living.

In this book, Randy Pausch has combined the humor, inspiration, and intelligence that made his lecture such a phenomenon and given it an indelible form. It is a book that will be shared for generations to come.

To learn more, and for links to watch the Last Lecture online, visit www.TheLastLecture.com


The Eleventh Man by Ivan Doig

Driven by the memory of a fallen teammate, Treasure State University's 1941 starting lineup went down as a legend in Montana football history, charging through the season undefeated. Two years later, the "Supreme Team" is caught up in World War II. Ten of them are scattered around the globe in the war's lonely and dangerous theaters. The eleventh man, Ben Reinking, has been plucked from pilot training by a military propaganda machine hungry for heroes. He is to chronicle the adventures of his teammates, man by man, for publication in small-town newspapers across the country like the one his father edits. Ready for action, he chafes at the assignment, not knowing that it will bring him love from an unexpected quarter and test the law of averages, which holds that all but one of his teammates should come through the conflict unscathed.

A deeply American story, the Eleventh Man is Ivan Doig's most powerful novel to date.

Ivan Doig was born in Montana and grew up along the Rocky Mountain Fron, the dramatic landscape that has inspired much of his writing. A finalist for the 1979 National Book Award and one of the nominees worldwide for the 2008 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, he is the author of eight previous novels, most recently The Whistling Season, and three works of nonfiction, including The House of Sky. He lives in Seattle.

Elephant on a Trampoline

Buyback Today!

Did you miss the Fall Buyback before you left for break? Beat the crowds today and sell your books back at the Buyback window in the lower level hallway of the SUB until 4:30 PM today.

Here's some Friday fun for you:
Singing Horses

This Week's Bestsellers

Just After Sunset by Stephen King

Stephen King, who has written more than fifty books, dozens of number one New York Times bestsellers, and many unforgettable movies, delivers an astonishing collection of short stories, his first since Everything's Eventual six years ago. As guest editor of the bestselling Best American Short Stories 2007, King spent over a year reading hundreds of stories. His renewed passion for the form is evident on every page of Just After Sunset. The stories in this collection have appeared in The New Yorker, Playboy, McSweeney's, The Paris Review, Esquire, and other publications.

Who but Stephen King would turn a Port-O-San into a slimy birth canal, or a roadside honky-tonk into a place for endless love? A book salesman with a grievance might pick up a mute hitchhiker, not knowing the silent man in the passenger seat listens altogether too well. Or an exercise routine on a stationary bicycle, begun to reduce bad cholesterol, might take its rider on a captivating-- and then terrifying-- journey. Set on a remote key in Florida, "The Gingerbread Girl" is a riveting tale featuring a young woman as vulnerable--and resourceful--as Audrey Hepburn's character in Wait Until Dark. In "Ayana", a blind girl works a miracle with a kiss and the touch of her hand. For King, the line between the living and the dead is often blurry, and the seams that hold our reality intact might tear apart at any moment. In one of the longer stories here, "N.," which recently broke new ground when it was adapted as a graphic digital entertainment, a psychiatric patient's irrational thinking might create an apocalyptic threat in the Maine countryside... or keep the world from falling victim to it.

Just After Sunset-call it dusk, call it twilight, it's a time when human intercourse takes on an unnatural cast, when nothing is quite as it appears, when the imagination begins to reach for shadows as they dissipate to darkness and living daylight can be scared right out of you. It's the perfect time for Stephen King.


Why We Suck by Dr. Denis Leary

Do you SUCK?
Would you like to not SUCK?
Do you know other people who SUCK?
Would you like to tell them how to SUCK less or
how to possibly become totally SUCK-free?

Then buy this book, because inside Dr. Denis Leary is ready to help you overcome all the sucky things that make you such a suckass. Not to mentiona all the fat, loud, lazy and stupid suckholes you have to deal with at the office, family gatherings or while using public transportation.

Part memoir, part self-help tome but definitely a full-time funny assault on all the posers, politicians and pop culture icons who have sucked in public for far too long, this book is a call to arms for everyone who feels the way the good doctor does:

- Skinny jeans are for skinny people.
- Men will never change. Not even into clean underwear.
- If God didn't want us to eat meat, why did He make the cow so slow? (Ever eaten a cheetah-burger? Nope. And you never will.)

Buy this book and you will hopefully laugh out loud, call your mom a little more often and never vote for a member of the Bush family ever again.

At the very least, though, you'll have yourself a nice big twenty-six-dollar coaster to place your drink on while you watch TV. And isn't that reason alone to buy it?

Happy New Year!

Welcome to 2009!