The following items are available at the Hancock County Public Library, 900 W. McKenzie Road. For more information on the library’s collection or to reserve a title, visit hcplibrary.org.
Adult fiction
“Standard Deviation,” by Katherine Heiny
When Graham Cavanaugh divorced his first wife, it was to marry his irrepressible and spontaneously fun girlfriend, Audra. But Graham soon learns life with Audra can also be exhausting — constantly interrupted by chatty phone calls, picky-eater houseguests and invitations to weddings of people he’s never met. Audra believes through the force of her personality, she can overcome the most challenging interactions. She shepherds her son through awkward play dates and origami club, and establishes a friendship with Graham’s first wife, Elspeth. Graham doesn’t understand why Audra longs to be friends with the woman he divorced. After all, former spouses are hard to categorize; are they enemies, old flames, or just people you know really well? As Graham and Audra share dinners, holidays and late glasses of wine with his first wife, he starts to wonder about the choices he’s made.
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Adult nonfiction
“Videocracy: How YouTube Is Changing the World…with Double Rainbows, Singing Foxes, and Other Trends We Can’t Stop Watching,” by Kevin Allocca
As director of YouTube’s Culture and Trends department, Kevin Allocca said if aliens wanted to understand our planet, he’d give them Google. If they wanted to understand us, he’d give them YouTube. YouTube is the biggest pool of cultural data since the beginning of recorded communication. With 400 hours of video uploaded every minute, it would take more than 65 years just to watch the content posted in a single day. Allocca lays bare what YouTube says about our society and how our interactions with online content — watching, sharing, commenting on and remixing the people and clips that captivate us — are changing the face of entertainment, advertising and politics. Through YouTube, we are fueling social movements, enforcing human rights and redefining art. Whether your favorite YouTube video is a cat on a Roomba, “Gangnam Style,” an ASAPscience explainer or the “Evolution of Dance,” “Videocracy” reveals how videos and trends came to be and why they mean more than you might think.
