Friday, February 26, 2010

REMINDER! Rail Jam in Coming! Get Your Tickets!

March 5 & 6

Make sure to come to the MSU Bookstore to purchase your Rail Jam 2010 tickets! Ticket price is $13. Gain access to every awesome event with these two day tickets! This event is a the Gallatin County Fair Grounds and promises to be the biggest and best event yet!

Here is the schedule of events:

Friday:
Main Stage:
5:00-5:45 Local Band
6:00-6:45 Modifyde
7:00-8:00 Black Mask
8:30-10:00 GZA
Mega Ramp:
6:00-7:10 Ski Prelims
7:20-8:30 Board Prelims
Beer Garden:
5:30-8:00 Oz and Hyperdelic
Zebra After Party:
10:00-11:15 One Leaf Clover
11:30-1:00 Cure for the Common

Saturday:
Main Stage:
5:00-5:45 Local Band
6:00-6:45 Cure for the Common
7:00-8:00 The Chicharones
8:30-10:00 Bassnectar
Mega Ramp:
6:00-7:10 Ski Finals
7:20-8:30 Board Finals
Beer Garden:
5:30-8:00 Oz and Hyperdelic
Zebra After Party:
10:00-11:15 The Linx
11:30-1:00 Black Mask

http://www.therailjam.com/

Book Signing with Robert and Cheryl Gough

March 3rd, 11-1pm in the MSU Bookstore

Robert and Cheryl Gough will be available to sign your copy of The Guide to Rocky Mountain Vegetable Gardening. This book is the first vegetable gardening book to address the unique growing conditions and challenges of the five states of the Rocky Mountain region. Authors highlight how to select, grow, and harvest a host of vegetables that will succeed in the region and offer tips for extending the season.

If you live and garden in the Rocky Mountain region-Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Utah and Wyoming-you are faced with challenging growing conditions. But you can successfully grow vegetables in your region by knowing the right timing, the right vegetables selections, and the right advice for extending your short growing season.

You can purchase your copy in the MSU Bookstore or at our website.

Monday, February 22, 2010

This Weeks Bestsellers at the Bookstore

The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet
a novel by Reif Larsen

A brilliant, boundary-leaping debut novel tracing twelve-year-old genius map maker T.S.Spivet's attempts to understand the ways of the world.

When twelve-year-old genius cartographer T.S. Spivet receives an unexpected phone call from the Smithsonian announcing he has won the prestigious Baird Award, life as normal-if you consider mapping family dinner table conversation normal-is interrupted and a wild cross-country adventure begins, taking T.S. from his family ranch just north of Divide, Montana, to the museum's hallowed halls.

T.S. sets out alone, leaving before dawn with a plan to hop a freight train and hobo east. Once aboard, his adventures step into high gear and he meticulously maps, charts, and illustrates his exploits, documenting mythical wormholes in the Midwest, the urban phenomenon of "rims," and the pleasures of McDonald's, among other things. We come to see the world through T.S.'s eyes and in his thorough investigation of the outside world he also reveals himself.

As he travels away from the ranch and his family we learn how the journey also brings him closer to home. A secret family history found within his luggage tells the story of T.S.'s ancestors and their long-ago passage west, offering profound insight into the family he left behind and his role within it. As T.S. reads he discovers the sometimes shadowy boundary between fact and fiction and realizes that, for all his analytical rigor, the world around him is a mystery.

All that he has learned is tested when he arrives at the capital to claim his prize and is welcomed into science's inner circle. For all its shine, fame seems more highly valued than ideas in this new world and friends are hard to find.

T.S.'s trip begins at the Copper Top Ranch and the last known place he stands is Washington, D.C., but his journey's movement is far harder to track: How do you map the delicate lessons learned about family and self? How do you depict how it feels to first venture out on your own? Is there a definitive way to communicate the ebbs and tides of heartbreak, loss, loneliness, love? These are the questions that strike at the core of this very special debut.

Reif Larsen, author of the bestselling "The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet," will lecture at 7 p.m. Monday, March 8, in Montana State University's SUB Ballroom A. The talk, which will be followed by questions and answers and a book signing, is free and open to the public.

You can purchase this novel at the MSU Bookstore on the bestsellers shelf.


Committed
by Elizabeth Gilbert

At the end of her # 1 New York Times bestselling memoir Eat, Pray, Love, author Elizabeth Gilbert fell in love in the very best way -- unexpectedly -- with Felipe, a Brazilian-born man of Australian citizenship, who had been living in Indonesia for quite a long while. The couple commenced a life together and resettled in the United States. They swore eternal fidelity to each other, but they also swore to never, ever, under any circumstances get married. (Both were survivors of previous bad divorces, and the mere thought of legal matrimony filled them with dread and suspicion.) Indeed, the two might have gone on living together forever in happily unmarried bliss, but providence intervened one day in the form of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, who -- after unexpectedly banishing Felipe from American shores -- gave the couple a choice: they could either get married, or Felipe would never be allowed to enter the United States again.

Having been effectively "sentenced to wed", Gilbert decided to tackle her fears of matrimony by becoming a student of the institution, trying once and for all to understand what this befuddling, vexing, and contradictory, yet stubbornly enduring habit of human marriage actually is. Over the next ten months, as she and Felipe wandered haphazardly across Southeast Asia, waiting for the U.S. government to permit them to return to America and get married, the only thing she talked about, read about, or thought about was this perplexing subject.

Committed tells the story of one woman's efforts through contemplation, historical study and extensive conversation with every soul she encountered along the way -- to make peace with marriage before she entered its estate once more. Told with Gilbert's trademark wit, intelligence and compassion, the book attempts to "turn on all the lights" when it comes to matrimony, frankly examining questions of compatibility, infatuation, fidelity, autonomy, family tradition, economic realities, social expectations, divorce risks and humbling responsibilities. Myths are debunked; fears are unthreaded; historical perspective is sought; and romantic fantasies are ultimately exchanged for vital emotional compromises. In the end, the book becomes a kind of celebration of love -- with all the complexity and consequence that real love, in the real world, will always entail for any two people who are brave enough to endeavor it.

You can purchase this novel at the MSU Bookstore on the bestsellers shelf.

Friday, February 19, 2010

2010 Vancouver Olympics

Bryon Wilson and Heather McPhie represented the USA and Montana in Vancouver

Heather McPhie

Heather McPhie is formerly a competitive gymnast who began competing in freestyle skiing events at age 12. She soon discovered that jumping was one of her favorite things to do, which she credits to her gymnastics background. Heather is the youngest of three children, and attended Bozeman High School.

She is now 25-years-old, and participated in her first World Cup in 2006, at age 21. She got her first World Cup win at Deer Valley in January, along with a second- and third-place finish, and locked in her spot on the Olympic team. She competed in the Moguls competition Saturday, February 13th and was ranked third going into the finals. However, she fell in her final run knocking her out of medal contention. She finished 18th but has tons of potential to medal in the next Winter Olympics.

Bryon Wilson

Bryon Wilson started skiing at age three and worked his way up to freestyle at age 12 when a coach invited him and his brother Brad to join the Bridger freestyle program. Now 21-years-old, Bryon graduated with honors from Butte High School and went on to participate in his first World Cup in 2007 at age 18, where he placed 27th in moguls. At the 2009 World Cup Bryon got a chance to start after a teammate went out with an injury, and stunned spectators with two second-place finishes making him a new member of the U.S. freestyle ski team.

He was excited to get lunch and travel expenses paid for as part of the U.S. freestyle ski team. Now he's an Olympic medalist. Sunday, February 14th Bryon won the Bronze Medal in the Men's Mogul competition.

Not even Wilson could have expected that in two months he could have propelled himself past the other talented members of the men's moguls team to win a bronze medal and finish as the top American man in the event at the Vancouver Olympics.

"A year ago, I was just hoping to make the Olympics. That was my first goal going into this year," he said. "It was a long shot. But I'm glad I'm here."

"I'm stoked. It's super surprising but, you know, I've been skiing well."

Wilson, who competed in his first World Cup race in Finland in December after a teammate got injured, went on to post two second place finishes and was promoted to the "A" team.

In the men's final on Sunday, Wilson earned the highest marks for aerial tricks as he performed the two jumps with the highest degree of difficulty. His air trick score was higher than Canada's Alexandre Bilodeau, who won the gold.

Local Athlete Olympic Page

Friday, February 5, 2010

This Weeks Bestselling Books

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

"Brilliant and hugely ambitious....It's the kind of book that can be life changing."
-New York Times

It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will become busier still.

By her brother's graveside, Liesel Meminger's life is changed when she picks up a single object, partially hidden in the snow. It is The Grave Digger's Handbooks, left there by accident, and it is her first act of book thievery. So begins a love affair with books and words, as Liesel, with the help of her accordion-playing foster father, learns to read. Soon she is stealing books from Nazi book-burnings, the mayor's wife's library, wherever there are books to be found.

But these are dangerous times. When Liesel's foster family hides a Jew in their basement, Liesel's world is both opened up and closed down. In superbly crafted writing that burns with intensity, award-winning author Markus Zusak has given us one of the most enduring stories of our time.

This award winning novel is rumored to become a movie soon. This book can be purchased in the MSU Bookstore on the Bestsellers shelf.


Drive: the Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
by Daniel H. Pink

From Daniel H. Pink, the author of the bestselling A Whole New Mind, comes a paradigm-shattering look at what truly motivates us and how we can use that knoledge to work smarter and live better.

Most of us believe that the best way to motivate ourselves and others is with external regards like money- the carrot-and-stick approach. That's a mistake, Daniel H. Pink, says in Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, his provocative and persuasive new book. The secret to high performance and satisfaction-at work, at school, and at home-is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world.

Drawing on four decades of scientific research on human motivation, Pink exposes the mismatch between what science knows and what business does-and how that affects every aspect of life. He demonstrates that while carrots and sticks worked successfully in the twentieth century, that's precisely the wrong way to motivate people for today's challenges. In Drive, he examines the three elements of motivation-autonomy, mastery, and purpose-and offers smart and surprising techniques for putting these into action. Along the way, he takes us to companies that are enlisting new approaches to motivation and introduces us to the scientists and entrepreneurs who are pointing a bold way forward.

Drive is available for purchase at the MSU Bookstore.

New in Theaters

CHICK FLICKS!
This weekend is the premier of Dear John and When in Rome which are sure to get ladies everywhere in the mood for Valentines day!

Dear John: When a soldier named John Tyree (Channing Tatum) meets an idealistic college student named Savannah Curtis (Amanda Seyfried), it's the beginning of a true romance. Over the next seven tumultuous years, the lovers, separated by John's increasingly dangerous deployment, stay in touch through their letters, meeting in person only rarely. However, their correspondence triggers fateful consequences that neither could foresee.

The movie is based on the book by Nicholas Sparks who's other novels such as A Walk to Remember and The Notebook were made into movies. The movie has received mediocre reviews saying that, "Teens will swoon for far-fetched, syrupy romance."

When in Rome: Beth(Kristen Bell) is at a point in her life where love seems like a luxury she just can't afford. Years of waiting for that perfect romance has made Beth bitter, and one day, while vacationing in Rome, she cynically plucks a handful of coins from a local fountain of love. Almost immediately thereafter, Beth finds herself fending off the advances of a motley crew of suitors. Meanwhile, a smitten reporter (Josh Duhamel) does his best to convince Beth that true love isn't just a topic of fairy tales and romance novels. This romantic comedy also didn't not receive rave reviews but is said to be entertaining.





Show times for Bozeman's theater:

Dear John: 12:45 3:15 7:00 9:45

When in Rome: 1:05 3:30 5:40 8:00 10:05

Make sure to check out other great movies in the theater this weekend! Also, Nicholas Sparks books can be purchased at the MSU Bookstore

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

"Come Find Us" Pre-Season Trailer

Check out some phenomenal film editing and talented local skiers and snowboarders in this film trailer that is sweeping the internet. Many of the riders in this film are MSU students, and are putting Montana on the map in the ski and snowboard community. For more information, visit www.facebook.com/toysoldierproductions