Baseball Book

I've been reading another great baseball book for the last week or so. It's called Crazy '08 by Cait Murphy. Before I picked it up I had seen it had received more than a couple of very positive reviews. Any book about the dead ball era of baseball that is of good quality will get my attention.

This is baseball before the home run, before radio, before steel and concrete stadiums, baseball just asserting itself as the national past time and it's a game full of characters. That is what really drives this book is the character of the men on the field, umpires, players and managers. The reason there have been so many books written about baseball is because the length of the season and the pace of the game lend itself to storytelling. Because of that the game has always embraced its more colorful people. If you want to tell a good story it helps if the subject of your story is a little off the wall. This is not a problem in 1908. Cranks abound in this story and she brings in wonderful and funny anecdotal stories just as they are needed to illustrate a point she has made. I've always enjoyed baseball books that weave in short funny baseball stories into the main narrative and Murphy does it as good as anyone.

All the best baseball books are always about more than baseball. Baseball has always reflected what is happening in our country and Murphy takes that into account with some chapter length asides called "Time Outs." In each of these she examines what is going on in the United States in 1908. In the first one she describes the beautiful mess that is the city of Chicago and, in another one, she looks at the exclusion of Black Americans from the game and mainstream society.

The season is winding down and I'll probably finish it tomorrow. Now I got to go out there and find my next good read.

Closed again

It looks like we are closed again today. Yesterday we closed at 4 pm because of fumes due to the roof construction. This last few weeks have been an inconvenience to staff and library users alike. We are all hoping they finish that roof before Christmas.

Howdy

Since Harry Potter mania has taken over the country (except for me, I have yet to read book one of the series) how about a Harry Potter related link? Amazon looked at the statistics for the pre-orders of the new Harry Potter book, did some math with census data and put up a list of cities that have ordered the most books per capita. You can view the list here.

Library is nice and open now

It's been over week now since we have had to close due to fumes from the roof construction filling up the building. One of our staff members was walking around today with a meter on her body that was testing our air. The contraption she was wearing was making a humming noise all day and she wasn't all that pleased. I think she got tired of people coming up to her and asking what that noise was. All she could say is, "It's me."

Pirate book

I have seen all three of the Disney movies about pirates and over the weekend I finished a book called The Republic of Pirates by Colin Woodard. He focuses on the four to five year period after the War of Spanish Succession which ended in 1714. It turns out that the life of a pirate in that short period of time wasn't all that bad. It was certainly better than the life of a sailor on a merchant ship or a naval vessel. One of the big reasons men went a-pirating was due to the horrible conditions aboard ship for the common sailor. When you traveled from Europe to Africa, Africa to the Caribbean and then from the Caribbean to North American you could expect to spend some of that time fighting off scurvy when your fresh food ran out and you had to eat from the ship's often rotted stores. Now, if you jumped ship in the Caribbean and got yourself on a pirate vessel, not only did you eat fresh food much more frequently, (due to frequent stops at lush islands to distribute booty, repair ships and get drunk) you also got about 1000 times more money because the pirate society was the first truly democratic European society in the Americas. Booty was distributed much more fairly and pirates elected and monitored their captains.

I've been reading a lot of history books in the last year and this one was the best I have read in during that time, perhaps because his characters were so colorful. Woodard has done a wonderful job telling the personal stories and the overall history of the Caribbean pirates. Not only that, he also lays out quite nicely the reasons pirates existed. From what he says pirates had to exist in the Caribbean, England guaranteed it would happen when privateering started during the war and ill-treated sailors got wind of how lucrative it could be.

Still Closed

Well, it looks like we are going to be closed until Saturday morning. This whole thing with the fumes in the building has really given the staff here an odd week. In fact it was so odd that I took a day off instead of going to the Carolina Room. I did learn one thing this week after working at the Carolina Room on Monday night: archival libraries are pretty boring and slow at night unless you have some side work you can focus on. Know that.

I do hope that library users that can't get into the building this week are not too upset over the inconvenience. I know it's a terrible inconvenience for some users. There are people out there that not only use us as a source for their leisure reading but also to search for jobs. Closing down the building is not just an inconvenience for some. For them it can actually hamper their search for a new career.

The building was not closed without a lot of thought on the part of those that made the call. They chose to consider the safety of the staff and library users. For that I applaud them. Like I said, closing down has inconvenienced many but where health is concerned I think it is right to err on the side of caution.

Closed again

You may have noticed if you drove to the library today, we are closed until Thursday morning. I am sorry for the inconvenience. There is still some work being done to the roof of the library. The sealant they are using is being sucked in by the A/C which then distributes the fumes throughout the building. The fumes were especially bad downstairs and members of the circulation staff were reporting headaches and sore throats. I applaud those that were in charge that made the tough decision to close the branch after having been closed for an extended period before.

Changes

You may not be aware of this but the librarian profession is in a constant state of change. This excerpt of a good story on technology in libraries sums it up well: "“The librarian as information priest is as dead as Elvis,” Needham said. The whole “gestalt” of the academic library has been set up like a church, he said, with various parts of a reading room acting like “the stations of the cross,” all leading up to the “altar of the reference desk,” where “you make supplication and if you are found worthy, you will be helped.”"

I find this to very much be the case at the Morrison library. People don't come to the desk right off anymore. They tend to come to us when they get stuck. It is necessary to not only direct people to online resources and web sites but you have to know how to walk them through these resources and sites.

Michael Chabon

Last night I finished what will most likely be the most unique book I will read this year. I finished Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union. The novel is a murder mystery set in an alternate universe in which a temporary Jewish homeland has been set up in Alaska in 1948. It is set in present day and a down on his luck detective is attempting to solve the murder before the land reverts back to American control. Not only is it all that, it's also noir. And it's got gangsters. Real gangsters, tough gangsters. The kind of gangster that would kill ya just for lookin' at 'im cross eyed. Old school gangsters that have no fear of law enforcement or governments. Those are the kind of gangsters I like. Those that wield true power and don't have to concern themselves with the authorities. Those were the days.

To me as an overall novel this one held up much better that The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay. That Pulitzer Prize winning novel seemed to lag at the end. This book didn't. It really held my attention to the very last page. This book is going to appear on a lot of year end lists and will be seriously considered for a lot of awards.

Our doors our open

In case you were checking for information on the building, like West Virginia we are now open for business. For a couple of days there the new A/C unit wasn't working properly. Well, I guess the unit itself was working just fine but it wasn't hooked up to our ducts properly and then the building's thermometers were not feeding the right data into the contraption so it had to be manually turned on and off. Everything seems to be fine now except for a slight chemical odor that is permeating the building due to sone final work being done to the air ducts. No one has experienced a headache yet so I guess everything is fine.

Downstairs at the circulation desk there has been installed the self checkout stations. Our patient circulation staff is standing by at the terminals to help walk you through the self checkout process. I haven't tried it myself yet but I hear that it is pretty easy. The future of libraries is at your library today!

More reading

Well, I finally finished Rabbit Redux over the holiday. A long trip to Michigan for a funeral and a day of recovery followed by a holiday party really took away from my reading. I guess I could have read during that day of rest after the long road trip but I just didn't.

These two books concerning the character named Rabbit have been interesting reads. There is good bit of hopelessness and hopefulness that pervdades these novels. Much as it was in the novel Terrorist. To me that is what seperates truly great writing from what is merely good and entertaining, the ability to conjure up the depression and the joys of life as experienced by everyone that has ever lived. The mistakes we stupidly make, the people we've hurt, those that hurt us. He shows that hurt and how we can recover from even the worst of it.

The only problem I had with Rabbit Redux was some of the profanity, especially when used in reference to women and sexual situations. It seemed forced and unnatural. Almost like he was doing what he could to bring such profanity into a literary novel. In doing that he may have seemed daring at the time but now it just comes off as awkward.

A crossword puzzle

For some reason I thought it would be fun to create a crossword puzzle to hand out to library users during our summer adult reading program. Did you know that creating a crossword puzzle is harder than solving one? I stopped and restarted about four times. Finally yesterday I finished my rough draft and today I have it finished. I may tweak the clues before I hand it out next month but it's pretty much done. I offer it to you here. If you have a hankering to solve a crossword puzzle try the one I made which I will link to below this paragraph. Since the New York Times Puzzle has a name I will call this one "Two Authors in the Middle." You'll have to print it out to solve it since the fill-in portion is a jpeg and you can't type on it. Someday I'll figure out how to make PDF's and then you could fill it out on the computer.

I did violate two rules of crosswording (as I learned watching the movie Word Play). One: Not all the words are connected. It's actually two separate puzzles.
Two: Each letter should be in two words. There are two letters in this puzzle that only appear in one word.

Two Authors in the Middle

Interview archive

I came across an archive on the BBC's website. It's an archive of various interviews. You can hear interviews with some prominent authors here.

Back from vacation

Yesterday was my first day back two work after a two week layoff. Of course, sitting on my desk was a stack of books I had placed on hold earlier. Two books I have been anticipating were in that pile, The Children of Hurin by Christopher Tolkien and The Yiddish Policeman's Union by Michael Chabon. Wow, what to read first? I think I'll go with the Tolkien book since it's shorter and has been getting pretty favorable reviews. I think I may have to put down Rabbit Redux and read these two books first.

Halberstam

It's probable that you have seen that David Halberstam died in the last week. I have only read three of his books: Teammates, Summer of '49 and October 1964. Summer of '49 was the first book by him that I read and it is still the baseball book by which all others are measured. The only book on baseball I have read that comes close to the majesty of '49 is The Boys of Summer by Roger Kahn.

As a reporter and historian he brought to his books on baseball much more than the game. He brought in the world around the game that directly influenced how the game was poplulated and played. You can't have a major sporting league without the society that supports and staffs it. He knew that and brought the contemporary American culture into both Summer of '49 and October 1964. Two aspects of October 1964 really stand out to me: his description of the majesty of the young Mickey Mantle and the baseball tragedy of his early injuries and the awe in which the teammates of this damaged warrior held him and how the embrace of integration by the St. Louis Cardinals allowed them to beat the Yankees in 1964 and how the Yankees' management ignored racial integration and paid for it and didn't finish in 1st place again until 1976.

If you are even in the mood to read a baseball book you can't go wrong by picking up any of three books I mentioned above. He captures the game, the time and the players better than anyone else.

John Updike

Over the last few days I have been reading Rabbit, Run by John Updike. A few months ago I read my first Updike book, Terrorist. I've been told by a friend that Updike is sexist and that his portrayal of middle America is too pessimistic. I am withholding any judgement until I finish this book. Just like Terroist, Rabbit, Run is full of some stunning prose. Not only that but the book was published when Updike was 28 years old. That's amazing to me.

I have read that a complaint about Updike is that he doesn't address big issues in his book. So far I would have to disagree with that assessment. What can be bigger than a person's life? The main character is going through a bad time. He is leaving his wife, he is disillusioned with American life as it was lived in the early 1960's. Rabbit, Run is a serious book and I believe it can't be dismissed lightly.

How to be Impressed

I love reading the New York Times Book Review. Every now and then I will come across a review that flat wakes me up. I just finished reading a review by Clive James on two new books about Leni Riefenstahl.

Book talking

Every month the reference staff here at Morrison travels to Atria Merrywood, a retirement community, to give a book talk in their library. With a staff of six that means I go a couple of times a year. Depending on staffing you can sometimes go three times a year. I subbed for the bossman today because he had a lot of email to answer. It may have been more inolved than that but emails is the reason I am using today.

I was a little nervous going in today because I felt that last time I didn't do a very good job. I was not as prepared as I should have been. I've watched other staff deliver book talks and a couple of them can go in there with a few books and talk. I tried that last time and it just didn't work out. I need notes. I don't read from my notes but if I don't write down my major points and refer to the notes as I go I get lost and the talk is not nearly as good as it should be.

Today, armed with three pages of notes and four books I read recenlty I wowed the nine residents of Atria Merrywood that were in attendance. It's funny, my performance at Merrywood can determine how the rest of my week is going to go. My last performance sent my week into a tailspin. Right now I am ready to wrestle a b'ar.

So it goes...

I'm sure everyone has seen that Kurt Vonnegut died today. I figured I should be mentioned him because this wouldn't be much of a library blog if I didn't acknowledge the passing of one of the great writers and thinkers of the last fifty years.

One of the best experiences of my life was sitting in the audience at Spirit Square for about an hour listening to Kurt Vonnegut speak. This happened back in the early 90's before some of you were even born. I remember telling my friends afterwards that I felt I had sat in the presence of a truly wise person for the first time in my life. A remark that probably would have given him fits of laughter since to him man was anything but a wise animal.

Peeps! Peeps! Peeps!

OK, this has nothing to do with the library but how can I resist linking to a contest for dioramas with peeps? How could I not link to that? How?

Adios, Last Empress

Well, I put down The Last Empress the other day. I just couldn't get into it. It just isn't as interesting as Empress Orchid I have moved on to a biography of Johnny Cash by Michael Streissguth. This book I am really enjoying. I feel that I know a lot about Cash and I am learning new things about Johnny. I am really liking when the author goes into detail about the making of specific songs and albums. I love good descriptions of how music is created and recorded. I only wish there was more of that here.

Last Empress

I am in the middle of reading The Last Empress by Anchee Min. I am having a hard time really getting into the book. The writing is just as good, the attention to detail is still there but it has a detatchment that Empress Orchid didn't have. I have a feeling part of the reason is that this book is plowing through a longer time period than Orchid. Orchid was more about the title character than the last empress. Both books have a lot of palace intrigue (which is really fun when done right) but Orchid was really about Orchid, not so much politics. Empress is almost all politics and history. Heck, it's almost like one of those new Star Wars movies. It's different from a new Star Wars movie in that reading it has not caused me to want to gouge my eyes out.

I think I'll finish this book but I'm disappointed because I will nto be able to use this as enthusiastically in book talks as I was hoping. Using this book and its predecessor for book talks was my plan. I guess I still can do that but I like to talk about books I really like.

I'm a little bummed because I really wanted to like this book.