Poetry Competition

I just recieved a flyer in the interoffice mail about a poetry competiton sponsored by the Lanier Library of Tryon, NC. It's called the Sidney Lanier Poetry Award. You can view information on it here. They even have a category for high school students.

Upcoming Events

Since I haven't posted anything here in a while how about a quick list of what fun stuff we have coming up here at the branch?

Tomorrow, Saturday December 13th from 2pm until 5 pm we will be hosting a "Gift Wrapping Party." Bring your presents and a roll of wrapping paper to get a jump on the holiday season. There will be a gift tag station and other fun ideas to make you presents special. Cookies and hot apple cider included.

On December 16th at 7pm the "New Book Club" will be discussing Julia Glass' I See You Everywhere. They are always looking for new members.

On December 22nd at 6pm the Teen Writers Group will meet here. If you have a teen that enjoys writing and would like to meet other writers and participate in sharing and writing exercises bring 'em on by. Our group has been meeting for over two years and we have a great core of kids that are very supportive of each other.

Have you seen the white whale?

No, not New Gingrich, I am referring to the original white whale, ya'll: Moby Dick. Is anyone here interested in an online annotated version of Herman Melville's classic? You know I read that book when I was way too young to understand it. I should read it again. Who wants to start a discussion group?

Yes, We Are

Open that is. The library is open today and we are open for our usual hours. C'mon in, we don't want to sit here by ourselves. Not that we are but you know what I mean.

More Early Voting

Early voting is now completely out of control. The line stretches around the front of the building as you can see below and then curves around into the parking lot on the side of the building which you can see in the following pictures. Craziness. The wait is at least two hours.

From Drop Box

Current Line

It's a bit longer now. I think we are looking at a two hour wait now.

The Current Early Voting Line

 

Testing Photo Posting Again

This time using Google's Picasa.

Small Size

From All we need is Blog?

Thumbnail

From All we need is Blog?

People are Funny (more early voting)

I've taken several calls about the wait for early voting and I have informed a few people that the Marion Diehl Rec Center has less of a line than we do here at the Morrison Regional Library. A couple of people have reacted to this like I told them to hop in their car and drive to Michigan to vote. According to the all powerful Google Maps the Rec Center is only 2.6 miles away.

Early Voting

It's that time of the year again. The time of the year when people stand in line all day so they can vote early. There are campaign signs all over the place, our parking lot is full and there are campaigners waving signs and handing out literature out front. It's a regular hootenanny. Early voting locations, dates and times can be viewed here.

The line is actually forming in the back of the building. You can walk around the outside of the library or you can cut through. This is the front of the line around noon today. This line you see here is not that bad. It was longer earlier, from what I have been told. I think the wait in this line is about 30 minutes. That's not too bad.


This is a view from the end of the line.


Here are the faithful with their signs and literature. It's easier if you just take what they want to give you and move on rather than so "no, thanks." Believe me.

Testing picture posting

I've been perusing a few photo hosting sites the last couple of days in preparation for the class I am teaching next Wednesday and I am really liking how the site called Photobucket plays well with other sites.

David Foster Wallace

I don't know how many of you have heard of or read anything by David Foster Wallace. He has an enormous book called Infinite Jest that I have yet to read. All that I have read by him have been his essays. If you ever get a chance you should read the long essay called A Supposed Fun Thing I'll Never do Again. It's about a cruise a magazine sent him on hoping to get an article out of it. It's an amazing piece of writing. Whenever you read something by him you just could sense you were reading the writings of someone that saw the universe a little more clearly than you did. He could dig a little deeper and then do the hardest thing in the world, write about what he saw and make you understand. A lot of times he would do that and simultaneously make you laugh.

He was found dead on Friday. Supposedly he committed suicide. He truly was a great writer and it's too bad that, at 46, his output has ended. There is a good remembrance of him here. The quote used in the last paragraph is a good example of Wallace's writing.

Igoogle gets really cool

I don't know how many of you mess with the personalized google paged called Igoogle but they have some really awesome backgrounds available now. I got me a Bob Dylan one.

PLCMC Madden Tournament

This is going to be fun. The library now has Xbox 360's. We have multiple copies of Madden '09. We are having a tournament. We will be having a first round at 8 different branches and a final round with the 8 winners at the main library. The schedule is below. There are only 16 spots available at each branch so registration is required. There will be prizes awarded at each first round and the grand prize for whoever comes out on top at the finals is a $50 gift card for GameStop. Not a bad deal if you ask me. If you think you can beat 127 other Madden players call one of the branches listed below and get in the game.

Dates	Location	Event Time	Telephone
October 2nd	Independence Regional Library	6-8	704-416-4800
October 4th	Morrison Regional Library	12-4	704-416-5431
October 9th	Beatties Ford Road Library	5-9	704-416-3000
November 4th	South County Regional	1-4	704-416-6640
November 4th	Mint Hill Library	1-4	704-416-5200
November 10th	Freedom Regional Library	3-7	704-416-4221
November 15th	Main Library	12-4	704-416-0500
November 15th	Matthews Library	1-5	704-416-5000

Finals at the Main Library on November 22nd from 1-4.

Joe Haldeman

I just finished a nice fairly short science fiction novel the other day. It's called Marsbound and it's by Joe Haldeman. It's told in a first person perspective in the voice of a 18 or 19 year old woman who is emigrating to Mars with her parents and younger brother.

The only problem with reviewing a science fiction book is that it's hard to discuss a book of science fiction without giving away too much. What I will say is that this character is a little different than what you might expect for a narrator in a hard science fiction novel like this. She's not a genius. She's a bright kid that is just starting college but is not in the top 1/10 percentile of her class.

Haldeman takes us through their long trip to Mars and manages to make the six-month trip interesting. Our narrator has an unexpected romance that is handled nicely and we get some good character development during the relatively down time.

He does in this novel what he has done in much of his most recent work, he places a story not too far in the future and changes the technology just enough so any of us would be comfortable in that world.

The first half of this novel is much stronger than the second half. First we meet the characters, they travel to Mars, establish themselves in the small rustic community and have some normal interpersonal conflict. Shortly after that the book takes a more galactic turn. For a while there I thought he might be producing a John Kessel type of story where the action takes place in a nicely realized setting with conflicts between humans. I was really hoping the action would stay on Mars and a couple of nicely set up stories would resolve themselves over the course of the novel. It's not to be, the novel expands beyond Mars and mankind realizes they may not be alone in the universe.

Not that the book goes south and is not worth reading. It's still a fine piece of science fiction and I tore through it. There is some nicely conceived alien biology and an appealing alien character called "Red" that is really worth experiencing. I think I would have been more satisfied at the end if it had stayed home on Mars a bit longer. Maybe it could have just been longer. I have felt that way about a few of his later novels and I reckon wanting a novel to be longer is a good thing.

Outside Looking In

IMG_2281
Originally uploaded by zzazazz

Jessica saw this praying mantis clinging to the outside of one of the windows downstairs, right next to where the holds are kept. I stepped outside and the giant insect actually turned its head to look at me. I was ready for it to raise one of its claws and say, "Hello."

The New York Times Daily

Every year we reevaluate our magazine subscriptions. This year I suggested we drop an expensive publication that, due to its free electronic format had become redundant, and pick up the daily New York Times. It's pretty pricey but I think it's worth it since the total cost was offset by our canceling the Sunday edition we were getting. We are now the only branch, other than the Main Library, that can say it provides its users with access to the New York Times Daily. We're pretty happy about that.

How the Library can help

The Consumerists magazine website has a list of ways the public library can help you during tough economic times. You can read it here.

The Chris Farley Show: A Biography in Three Acts by Thomas Farley

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
I tore through this book. Like the history of Saturday Night Live called "Live from New York" this is an oral biography of Chris Farley (interestingly, in this book the "Live from New York" book takes a pretty harsh hit from someone claiming he was misquoted in the SNL history). The oral format worked for me. As Tom wrote in the introduction, Chris Farley lived the type of life where all his friends had "Chris stories."



This book, like its subject's life, is funny, revealing, touching, maddening and ultimately tragic. There is a period in Chris' life where he really had his stuff together he was on top of the world and I was unaware of that. I was not prepared to for the Chris Farley that was sober and on top of things and brightening the world around him. That high period in his life makes his ending all the more depressing. Especially since it really seemed he was going to keep his addictions down and go on to break out from the "fat guy falls down" comedy and truly make something great one day.



What surprised me was the unanimous love for Chris by everyone that is interviewed. Surely they could have found someone out there that knew Chris that thought he was a jerk? Even at his most outrageous he could still find a way to make people love him. To me, that's another tragedy of his life. He was greatly loved and it seems he really didn't see it or, if he did see it, feel he deserved it.



It's also impressive for the honesty of all those interviewed. Sure, they all loved Chris but they do not airbrush his faults. Even some of things that made him endearing could become a pain in the behind if a schtick was carried on too long. His drinking, his drug use, his rehab and the problems of and caused by his family are all addressed here. It's an honest book and in a biography, that is all that you can really hope for.


View all my reviews.

Reading List from Slate

I found an annotated weekly list of what the writers at Slate are reading here. I like it because it's a thematic list. Right now the current list concerns the birth of our country.

Robert Sawyer Lecture on SF

I found this lecture on Robert Sawyer's website. It's an excellent analysis of what makes good and bad science fiction. I highly recommend giving it a listen.

Music at the library

This Saturday we will be having a musician playing in the auditorium at the Morrison Library at 2 pm. Lenny's been playing music around Charlotte for over thirty years and he'll bring a wide range of acoustic Americana and blues songs to entertain us for about an hour. It should be fun for the whole family.

...our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts

According to Nicholas Carr Nietzsche said that. The article I linked to is in the current issue of the Atlantic Monthly and in it Carr ponders what it means for our minds now that we rely so much on the Internet for our research. Diane Rehm recently did a show on a very similar topic.

What struck me early in my reading of the article is Carr's admission that he has a hard time getting into deep reading mode. I noticed that in myself but I hadn't thought to ask around of my readin' friends if they were having the same problem. As a TV raised child of the 70's it took me a while to become a good reader. I don't want to the internet to ruin me as a reader.

Author Interviews

The Atlantic Monthly has published an index to their author interviews here. There's some pretty good stuff there.

Summer film series

Wow, I haven't posted here in a couple of weeks. I've probably lost the two people that checked this every now and then. My buddy, Sam Shapiro, who is the manager of the Popular Library at the Main Library loves to put together film series. I work mostly evenings so I miss almost everything he does. Finally he has a series on Sunday afternoons this summer that I hope attend a few times. He's going to show westerns. Not only that, he is going to show two of my favorite John Wayne westerns, Rio Bravo and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. You can view the whole lineup here.

How not to get taken

There is a nice entry on the official Google blog on how not to get scammed over the internet. You can read it here.

I've noticed I tend to get a lot of phishing emails disguised as communication from eBay. A good rule of thumb for eBay users is to log into eBay and see if there is a message in your inbox on the eBay website. If not, then the email is fake.

New Robert Heinlein

It's not often you can say that a new book by a dead science fiction writer contains quality material that has never been printed before. There is a collection of scripts he wrote in the 1950's that is being released by Subterranean Press. It's called Project Moonbase and Others. Pretty neat, I think. The collection is a little pricey but I own pretty much everything he's ever released, admittedly much of it in paperback, so I may have to consider purchasing this.

If you are interested there is a script available for free at the Subterranean site. You can view it here.

The Joys of Reading

Pulitzer prize winner, and now Nebula award winner, Michael Chabon has an essay in the Los Angeles Times about how cool reading is. You can read it here.

Scary Clouds over Southpark

Scary Clouds over Southpark
Originally uploaded by zzazazz

During my dinner break yesterday I saw these clouds over Southpark. I couldn't resist taking a shot.

Short fiction

I love science fiction short stories. Some of the best SF I have read has been in the short story form. Right now I am reading a collection called Wastelands. So far I am really enjoying it. My only criticisms of it are that there aren't enough older stories and and that first one by Stephen King was just silly. Other than that it's been a fun read so far.

Today I did find a list put together by Jonathan Strahan of all the science fiction short story collections he could find that are coming out in 2008. You can view it here. There sure are a lot.

Brad Bird on Ollie Johnston

One of the classic Disney animators, Ollie Johnston, passed away recently. A personal favorite of mine, Brad Bird, wrote a nice piece on Mr. Johnston for an animation blog. You can read it here.

People don't use Google?

From the smart people at Metafilter I found a chart displaying which search engines are used the most. You can view the chart here. I use Google exclusively, which do you use?

Need more book blogs to read?

The always helpful Metafilter site today has an entry that links to a lot, and I mean a lot, of good book related blogs. You can view them here. Be sure to scroll down to the comments. There are some good suggestions there also. Metafilter is the brightest online community out there.

I think I'll write a fake memoir

I see on the New York Times book blog that another memoir may be fake. I was thinking not that long before these fake memoirs were exposed that there were an awful lot of memoirs out there. "Can there really be that many interesting people in the world?" I thought. I think you should have to be at least 60 before you are allowed to write a memoir. I will tell you one thing, you are going to have to be at least 60 before I read your memoir.

The Main Library

Did you happen to read the article on the early stages of the possible renovation of the Main Library? I like what I am hearing from Mr. Brown, the library director. I think looking at the Main Library as a possible Imaginon for adults would be a great idea. I know that teens meet up at Imaginon and spend a day there using the facility. Friends that don't live in the same neighborhood have a fun place to rendezvous. A place that their parents know is safe.

I would like to see a Main Library that is a facility that adults will go to just for the heck of it. A place in downtown where they don't have to worry about parking or dodging transients. Right now the Main Library isn't a gathering place. Those that work downtown use it for picking up items they have placed on hold or browsing the CD or DVD collection. When I go down to do research I see a bunch of homeless people hanging out and that's it. Most other people seem to come in and get what they want and leave. Balancing the needs of transient citizens and year round residents has always been a challenge for libraries in big cities. Books have been written on that topic, I think.

I've always thought that partnering with a coffee shop would be a great idea for the downtown library. Initially I thought they were going to put in a coffee shop and then I saw that a cart had been stuck near the entrance on the first floor. I'd like to see a working coffee shop with its own entrance and periodical collection at the corner of Sixth and Tryon. It could be a gathering place full of good coffee, magazines, out-of-town newspapers and wireless internet. Something like a Border's Books and Music. Since it has its own entrance it could make its own hours and you could even have entertainment in there at night. A little stage could be stuck in the corner and you could have music, readings or even stand up comedy.

I'd also like to see a gaming room that was open the same hours as the library. Right now they have gaming events and every machine is used. A room devoted to gaming would be unique and a huge hit.

I remember traveling to Winston-Salem with a friend a few years ago to see a band play at a club. Being library people we decided we should go to the local main library. We did and we left pretty quickly. It was an old building full of homeless guys. It wasn't a bad library, I'd use it if I lived there. They had plenty of material and computers but it was just not a place that was conducive to killing a few hours of time. What did we do? We went to Border's. I would like to see the Mecklenburg Main Library become a place where someone like me would go the library to see what it was like and then stay for a few hours because it offered me a reasons to hang out.

A Whodunnit

Last week I finished probably the fifth mystery I have ever read in my life. Maybe sixth if you count those robot SF mysteries that Isaac Asimov wrote. I remember the one I read was about a murder that took place on a planet where the human society that developed there loathed contact with other humans. If they didn't see each other in person how could someone be murdered? I guess that would be a...mystery.

The novel I finished last week was The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie. It was the second Agatha Christie book I have read. Seeing as how it's a mystery I cant' say too much about it but I will say that I first decided to read the book because of the introduction written by Connie Willis for her new book of short fiction. Willis names this books specifically as one of her favorites and goes on to say that she learned almost everything she knows about plotting a novel from "Dame Agatha." Unfortunately the introduction also gives away the identity of the murderer. I read it anyway. I had never read mystery that I had known who was going to be the murderer before going in.

I will say this for Agatha Christie, each of her books that I have read I have torn through. I guess in any good mystery you get to the point where sleep and hygiene become less important than getting to the end and discovering who is the murderer. I don't see myself ever becoming an avid reader of mysteries but an Agatha Christie mystery every year or so might be a nice break from routine.

Human Smoke

I just finished reading the most amazing book last night. It's called Human Smoke and it's by Nicholson Baker. The book is a series of paragraph to page-long vignettes about the lead up to and first couple years of World War II. Each tiny chapter covers a news story or diary entry and, at some point in the entry, the date will be given. It's written in a journalistic style with very little editorializing by the author. It is obvious, though, that the author's sympathies are with those who opposed the war rather than with those that worked to broaden the conflict.

I have seen at least one other review remark on the similarity between the beginnings of World War II and the current conflict in Iraq. I don't mean that there is any comparison between Hitler and Saddam although both of them were brutal mass murderers. The similarity that stands out in this book is when you compare the desire for war of Churchill and Roosevelt and George W. Bush and friends. In both instances the Western powers spoke of their desire for peace while rushing headlong into war. The similarity in the rhetoric will cause you to doubt your own existence.

What had always been impressed upon me was the inevitability of the Second World War. Hitler was bad and if it hadn't had been for Churchill and Roosevelt and the mighty sacrifices of the 'greatest generation' then we would all be speaking German right now. What Baker shows is the folly of that belief. There were plenty of opportunities to stop the war from spreading in 1940 and 1941. What is intriguing is that it may have been possible to avoid the ultimate horrors of the Holocaust if the goal of the allies was truly humanitarian and not on an aggressive war footing. Imagine that, lives saved by avoiding war.

The reviewer, Mark Kurlansky, sums it up better than I can: "It may be one of the most important books you will ever read. It could help the world to understand that there is no Just War, there is just war -- and that wars are not caused by isolationists and peaceniks but by the promoters of warfare."

Legal Forms

Surprisingly, one of the hardest questions to answer at the reference desk is whether or not we carry legal forms. We do have a few books on our reference shelves that can be photocopied but usually we just don't seem to have exactly what someone desires. There is a nice set downtown that people were always happy with when I worked in telephone reference but a legal form is something most library users don't consider a big enough project for a trip downtown. It is a very useful set of books. They are designed to be legal in North Carolina.

This last Saturday a gentleman came in and needed a Power of Attorney form. I showed him what we had on our reference shelves and he wasn't happy with it. He suggest I check online. I searched a site had saved on my Delicious bookmark page but it was a pay site and the forms were priced at over $25. We decided to search some more. I then searched the bookmarks of other Delicious users and found this form. He looked it over and thought it was perfect and I printed it out for him. I then bookmarked the site myself. If you ever need to do your own search you can do that here.

I never can know when I mention a website like Delicous if everyone knows what I mean. Delicious calls itself a "social bookmarking site." Essentially you use the site to bookmark other websites. You can then share what you find with others and use what others have bookmarked for your own purposes. That is what I did this weekend. I used what others had bookmarked to help me with the question. I searched for "legal forms" on Delicious and went to the site that the most users had bookmarked. After I did that I had the question answered and the form printed out two minutes later. It's the power of the hive mind.

My favorite use of the internet hive mind concept is a section of the site Metafilter (a collection of nerdy people that link to cool and interesting and educational and funny webites) called Ask Metafilter. It's simple, once a week each member of the Metafilter community can submit a question to the hive mind. There are some smart people on Metafilter and you get good answers from the community. I tried it for the first time a week ago and got these answers.

100 greatest last lines

I don't recall seeing one of these lists before. I've seen the 100 greatest novel lists. I've seen the 100 greatest American novel list. I've seen the list of the best opening lines. Now the American Book Review has released a list of the 100 best last lines from novels.

Arthur C. Clarke

Science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke has died. I've been reading his stuff for a long time. I haven't devoured his books over the years like I have Robert Heinlein's but I consider his short stories to be a treasure.

Submit art to the Library of Congress

The Library of Congress is getting ready to unveil a new display that stresses interactivity and they are asking for citizens to send their works of art to this website. They will take just about anything: poems, photographs, songs and essays and whatever else you can send as an email attachment. All they want to know is what inspired that piece of art.

Online Sports Illustrated Archives (Free)

A short while ago I wrote a post about some free quality online reading you can find on the internet. Today I learned about a new magazine to add to that list.

This Thursday the Sports Illustrated website will launch something called the Vault. The Vault will give free access to the archives of Sports Illustrated magazine. We may not know this but Sports Illustrated has been around for over fifty years and the writing at the magazine has been spectacular as long as I have been reading it. I started reading it in the early 80's. My Step Father's Mother bought him a subscription for him to SI every Christmas. You can read a good New York Times story on the story here.

Free Credit Report

A question that comes up every now and then is "How can I get my credit report?" People often end up getting suckered in by sites that will charge you to get your report but there is a free way to get it. Due to a law that was passed you can get one free each year from each of the three major credit companies. You can do it here. If you wish to verify the veracity of this website you can read about at the Federal Trade Commission's website here.

Crooked Little Vein

I just finished the strangest book this morning. It's called "Crooked Little Vein" by Warren Ellis. It's a short book and it's about a down and out private detective in Manhattan (think Guy Noir with a potty mouth and a drinking problem) that is engaged by the President of the United States' chief of staff to find an ancient book that allegedly could change our country. The detective, Mike McGill, then embarks on a cross country journey and meets every type of whack job and freak you can possibly imagine. I gather that Warren Ellis has spent way to much time on the internet because he has mined the underbelly of the web and has decided if he's seen it there then it must be everywhere. Maybe it is, sometimes I don't need to know though. A fascinating, occasionally gross and funny book that is not for the timid.

I first came across Ellis because of Bryan Hitch who did the art work for the Marvel Comics series called The Ultimates. I was so taken by that series that I went to the comic bookstore Heroes Aren't Hard to Find and asked one of the always helpful staff to suggest some of Hitch's early work to me. He immediately mentioned a series called The Authority, a reimagining of the superhero team which was written by Ellis with art by Hitch. I love when things come together like that. Warren Ellis has a blog here. It can occasionally be a little not safe for work and he's frank with his use of strong language but he does link to some pretty fascinating stuff now and then. Like I said, he spends a lot of time online.

Ed's Handy Dandy eBay Selling Strategies

I teach a class on selling your just on eBay at the library. In fact I am teaching it next month and I have been working on what I will use for tips at the end of the class. Here is what I have now. I've been selling on eBay since 1999 and I think this is all solid advice. The next time you sell some valuable family heirloom to a total stranger over the internet I hope you use a few of my tips.

1)Don't use a reserve. Your opening bid is your reserve. What are you afraid of? More than likely you didn't pay that much for what you are selling anyway. And if you don't want it don't be afraid to get less than you think you should. You'll get what it's worth without a reserve, believe me.

2) Set the opening bid low. I'm talking like $1.00 even if what you are selling may sell for more than $200. I have found that the lower you start the opening bid the more early bids you receive. The more early bids you receive then the more interest there will be in your item. More bids gives a potential buyer confidence in your item. If other people are interested it must be worthwhile. It's the same behavior you see at the library when someone brings a cart of books onto the floor for shelving. More interest equals more bids and more bids equals more competition. Competition means a higher selling price. It's a loop that fuels itself and it works. Don't be afraid. If it's really worth $200 then it will sell for $200 regardless of the opening bid level. The reward of a higher selling price outweighs the risk.

3) Set your shipping price low. Heck, set your shipping price less than the actual cost. A low shipping price shows your potential buyer that you are not looking to make every last cent off of him that you can. One of the biggest reasons I don't bid on an item is the shipping cost floating around ten dollars. Those people with high shipping costs are just trying to make an extra buck off their customers and, to me, that's just greedy. Just like a low starting bid a low shipping price may actually help drive the selling price of your auction higher and occasionally you make out like a bandit. Consider it a reward for not being overly greedy.

4) Avoid hyperbolic language. Don't call it rare if it's not really rare. The T206 Honus Wagner card is rare and what you are selling probably isn't. People know what they want and what you have. Getting carried away with your description causes doubt in the buyer's mind and you want them to have confidence in you. The more professional your writing the better off you will be.

5) Always, alway, always include a picture. Always. If you don't have a picture eBay now provides pictures for some items like books and DVD's.

6) Do not use the extra bells and whistles eBay offers to sell you. You don't need them. If you have something that people want it will sell without the extras.

7) Consider the timing of your auction. I like to end mine in the evening and, if I am on top of things, on Sunday evening. I know a lot of people can access the internet all day but there are some that can't. People like to bid late so why not end your auction when the highest percentage of buyers are at home, in their underwear and bidding on your stuff?

Murder Mystery Night

On February 8th we had our Murder Mystery Night here at the Morrison Library. It was a huge success, over 100 people attended the event. Main Library computer nerd, Ian, was on hand with has super fancy digital camera to photograph the event. You can view his photographs here.

A Retirement Party

Longtime circulation staff fixture, Joan, is retiring this week. Today we had a little shindig for her and you can see pictures of the event here. She will be with us until Friday so if you see her at the circulation desk this week wish her well.

Michael Swanwick's "The Dragons of Babel"

Right now one of my favorite writers of speculative fiction is Michael Swanwick. I just finished a novel by him called "The Dragons of Babel." It's a fantasy novel but it's about as far as you can get from the traditional Lord of the Rings "high fantasy" as you can get. The world he has created, and used for a few short stories and one previous novel, is a world of magic and the modern. You will find familiar and unfamiliar fantasy world denizens that can speak in the purple ways of an imaginary past while simultaneously speaking like someone born in 2009. I don't know if I ever read stories like his before. It's like they exist in two worlds at once. The obvious influences are there yet the dichotomy of his world is what makes it unique, rich and very lived in.

These two extremes he combines in setting, character and language he also uses in his storytelling. In "The Dragons of Babel" he takes us from the humblest of villages, to refugees fleeing a massive war, a dirty, but still magical refugee camp and then to the throne room of the most powerful nation in the Land of Faery. Along the way we encounter handsome and cruel elf princes and dog-faced rapists and a ten year old girl with an ancient soul and a troop of randy female centaur soldiers and a city alderman who is a haint and can literally feel the pulse of his city and a metal dragon fighter/bomber who cruelly rules over a small village he crash landed near. All these settings and characters enrich this most realized of fantasy worlds. The novel is a mystery, a comic romp with palace intrigue, a love story that starts during a treasure hunt in giant landfill and a tale of the traditional hero's journey. It's a genius display of an imagination that has been released of all its bonds.

I understand from Swanick's blog that he is working on another book in this world. I can't wait.

Follow the election

Google has put together a tool that can allow you to have live Super Tuesday election results appear on your blog. You can see it below. Google is so fun.

Morrison Panorama

Morrison Panorama
Originally uploaded by zzazazz

This is the new photograph we will be using on our in-house programming schedule in March. It's a two picture panorama I took today.

University Podcasts

This is something I have not really delved into yet but here is a promising list of podcasts of courses provided by big ole universities. Unfortunately, some require Itunes. I'm not a big fan of Itunes.

This aspect of the internet is just starting and, once everyone has a camera and a fast connection, online education may really take off.

Amazon Reviews

I've never asked any of my friends if they post reviews on Amazon. I do, but not very often. I've been using Amazon for several years and have less than ten reviews. I found a good article on Slate that discusses top Amazon reviewers and the strange limbo in which amateur writers live in.

Free Quality Reading Online

I see a few newspaper and magazine sites that now offer free content online. Some even include archives. I think this is going to be the standard pretty soon. Many news and magazine sites have tried using a subscription service and have seen them go over like lead balloons. Here's a list of what I have found so far.

You can read the NY Times for free back to 1987

The Atlantic magazine is offering free back issues to 1995

Time magazine has an archive you can search and read back to 1923. I've done some searching and if it's not a complete archive it's pretty big.

The Boston Globe has a free archive back to 2003.

Discover magazine goes back to 1993.

The Paris Review is building an archive of the interviews.

Library Murder

On Friday, February 8th at 7 pm we will be sponsoring a Murder Mystery night here at the Morrison Regional Library. There is going to be some wine, some catering, a body and some clues. Several staff members have been spending a lot of time putting this together and it sounds like the plot and the clues are starting to come together. There is a blog about the night and its preparation over on a blog that was set up by one of our librarian's, Melanie. You can view that here.

So far we have sold over thirty tickets so it's looking to be a pretty exciting night. All money raised is going to the Friends of the Morrison Library and they will take the money and use it to improve the Morrison Library. A lot of the library staff will be on hand also as participants and hosts so this will also be a good chance to interact with your friendly, helpful and interesting Morrison staff people.

Here is how the program is listed on the library's website: Love Your Library to Death, A Murder-Mystery Party
You can be part of the mystery during an incredible evening of wine, cheese and mayhem. Collect clues to figure out just who did the dastardly deed. Proceeds from this event benefit the Morrison Chapter of the Friends of the Public Library. Tickets $20. Call 704-336-2109. Credit card, cash or check.
Location: Morrison Regional
Date: Friday, 2/8/2008 at 7:00 PM
Age Range: Adults

Today we did some switching around of furniture in the fiction/young adult area. We took the newspaper shelf and moved it into the adult reading area and that opened up a bunch of space down in the young adult area. We put a table and some chairs in there along with four large bean bags. We now have a Teen Reading Area. We are very excited about this and there were already some teens down there lounging this morning. They weren't playing hooky, they were here with their school. You can see pictures of our improvements here.

A Quote

I am currently reading Steve Martin's memoir entitled "Born Standing Up." As you may have guess from the title the book focuses on his ten years as a working stand up comedian. Here's a great quote from the book concerning his decision to attempt to make a living by making people laugh: "I did have the one element necessary to all early creativity: naivete, that fabulous quality that keeps you from knowing just how unsuited you are for what you are about to do."

Safe for work back from the dead?

I went back and read a classic piece of science fiction a couple of weeks back. I read The Stars, My Destination by Alfred Bester. I read the novel because it kept popping up on lists that covered the all-time best science fiction novels. As a reader of science fiction shouldn't I read the one book, that I haven't read, that seems to appear on these lists?

It's a rare science fiction novel that can read well after ten or twenty years. The Stars, My Destination was published in 1956. As someone who has read a lot of classic SF much of it written back in what's called the golden age of SF I have found that much of what passes for future technology in 1945 or 1956 can appear downright strange to the reader in 2007. For example, I read The Door into Summer (1957) by Robert Heinlein recently and he described an invention by the main character that could be easily seen as a precursor to computer aided design. But, since this is the early 50's the drafting tool he describes is mechanical, not a piece of software. Same idea but different ballpark completely.

The Stars, My Destination though, holds up well. One reason is the use of teleportation by most of humanity. Since common folk can transport themselves from almost any point of the planet to another with their minds, the richest people on the planet (members of families that run corporations like feudal lords) choose to travel as primitively as possible by using classic vehicles driven by chauffeurs. The truly decadent may have a horse driven coach or pay to have a train track put in for a single use. The very powerful also wouldn't email each other, they send messengers. Emailing or using a telephone would be common. Hey, if everyone could afford a giant SUV no one would own one.

Reading Lists

Occasionally someone will ask us if we keep track of what books they have checked out over the years. Not to make sure we are not sharing the information, but because they wish to know if they have read a particular book before. I used to only recommend the library sponsored website called Reader's Club. You can create a reading log and keep track of what you have read. The only drawback to the Reader's Club reading log is that it's not really set up to help you add books you have read in the past. You can add those books but since it doesn't have a searchable database finding what you have read and adding those books to your log is time consuming. If you don't mind starting from scratch, Readers Club is the way to go.

Just recently I have started an account at a site called Good Reads. It's the latest in a long line of social networking websites and the first I have joined that is built around reading. Like the other social websites you and your friends share contacts and content. This time the content is your reading history. If you are interested you can see my reading history in the right sidebar of this blog. I am adding books that I have remembered that I have read everyday. You can enter dates also but here I am going more for just as complete a list of what I have read as I can. I want something I can refer to when I have thinking of what to use in a book talk. Before I just referred to my Reader's Club reading list, now I have a database that is searchable and that will be even more helpful.

Another book down

I am proud to announce that I am five books away from reading 30 books this year. I think back when I was in high school thirty books a year would not seem like a lot. I have more distractions these days, I think. And a career.

I finished Bad Monkeys by Matt Ruff. It showed up on hold for me and I had no idea where why I had placed it on hold. I saw on the cover of the book a blurb by Christopher Moore so maybe I read about it on his website. Probably not since I haven't been to his website in a while. Sometime during all the book review reading I do I must have come across a positive review somewhere.

It's the story of a woman who is being interviewed by a shrink in a jail in Las Vegas. We are told that she has killed someone she was supposed to. Turns out she is in a secret society that "takes out" people they consider evil. They don't try and change the world but if you kidnap people and torture them in your van alongside interstates, they will find you and kill you.

The story was just a tad convoluted with a few major twists at the end and the book was definitely a page turner but I went away feeling a little unfulfilled. Like a couple of Christopher Moore books I read the ending did not live to the buildup. Like Moore, I will probably give the next book by Ruff a chance. Surely someday someone will write a humorous novel that satisfies.

A good book review

It turns out the reason our country's name resonates so strongly is because the person the continents were named after has almost no historical standing.

Guns o' the South

I read the first couple of books in Harry Turtledove's series called Worldwar. A storyline in which aliens invade the planet in the middle of World War II. After a couple of books the story became a little monotonous for me but for a while there I was really enjoying it.

Right now I am reading his book, Guns of the South. In a nutshell, a group of white supremacists from the future show up with AK-47's, MRE's and hand grenades and help the South win the civil war. Armed with AK-47's Confederacy ends the war pretty quickly. In fact, General Lee actually captures Washington City, as it's called. I think he may have wrote this book just so he could write the dialog between Lee and Lincoln that takes place in the White House. It's an exchange between to towering figures from history that comes off as some of the most genuine feeling historical fiction writing I have ever read. It's quite a feat to take a story with such a fantastic premise and insert such realistic dialog. I was quite taken aback.

This happens barely halfway through the book and now the negotiations between the two former warring nations are starting. I am digging this book.

After I got tired of the Worldwar series I wrote Turtledove off a little bit. What has convinced me to delve in Guns of the South is the collection of short stories by Turtledove that I bought a few months ago. I was really impressed by a story about the apocalypse taking place in the middle of trench warfare during World War I. None of the soldiers noticed.

Howdy

I have been on vacation for almost two weeks. I am in northern Michigan visiting with family. I've done a little reading. In fact, I finished a science fiction book by Kathleen Ann Goonan. It was the first book by her I have read. The book I just read is called In War Times. It's a parallel worlds/time travel book that weaves some of the world war II memoirs of the author's father into the narrative. I really enjoyed it although it tied the assassination of John F. Kennedy to pretty much all the troubles we are currently facing in the world. Up until the final solution of the story I really enjoyed the novel. For some reason I have bee reading novels recently that have a hard time finding a satisfying ending. I attribute it to the same probelm I have with many SF novels. They keep reaching for the stars. Do you have to save the world or even existence itself? Can't we just have a nice adventure?

New Joe Haldeman Book

Just a couple of days ago I finished tearing through the new book by Joe Haldeman called "The Accidental Time Machine." Most of the time when you go on about Haldeman you are required to mention the book that cemented his status as a great SF writer, "The Forever War." Sometime in the mid nineties when I was in my mid twenties I was starting to really open up my science fiction reading a good bit. As I was searching for new authors I came across a mention of "Forever War" that described it as being based on the author's Vietnam experiences and as an answer to the Heinlein's "Starship Troopers" and the glorification of the military therein. That's the only hook I've found more initially appealing than Michael's short summary of Turtledove's "Worldwar: In the Balance:" Nazis fighting aliens. It also won the Hugo and Nebula awards.

What I really enjoy about Haldeman is, like Heinlein and Zelazny, that he is readable. I can crack open one of his books and I know I am going to be reading quality fiction with believable physics and/or technology and characters that are worthy of empathy. Another talent he has, and that he shows off in his book, is that he can take a foreign setting and with minimal explanation can flesh it out into a vibrant world.

This particular book is about exactly what the title implies. A student at MIT creates a gizmo that goes forward in time anytime he hits the reset button. That only catch is that each time the machine is engaged as a time travel device the time it jumps forward increase exponentially. I don' t to give too much away. He does have a nice time jumping adventure. He ends up in a medieval type theocracy that is so interesting that Joe could have created a book just around that. At some point he meets a nice girl. At some point he meets a living piece of software that may or may not be nice. Nice in her own way, I guess.

I guess one of the criticisms going around about this particular novel is that it's not a particularly serious book. I'd have to agree and disagree with that. It certainly is a story in which you don't feel like the main character is ever really in any danger but there is an underlying tension in the book, especially during his time in the theocracy.

Each of his last three books have felt, not unfinished, but maybe they could have been more. This one is no different. It's not a bad book, in fact it's quite enjoyable and is better than most of SF you will read all year. I just wanted more. I wanted it to be longer, deeper and uncut. I guess that's the price an author pays when he's this good. We always want more.

The Book Sale

Yesterday we had a book sale at the Morrison Regional Library. It was a success. We had shoppers coming in all day. A few people even came by more than once as we were bringing new books all the whole time we were going. We had an accordion player, a harpist and Lunch Money even played. Here are a few pictures from the event.

Grand Re-opening Party

Tomorrow, in the grassy area behind the branch, the Morrison library is having a festival to celebrate the end of our roof construction (and related closings). We are going to have crafts for kids, two performances by the band Lunch Money, storytimes and a big ole book sale. We received books from all over the county so we are going to have a lot of books out there for you to browse through. It should be fun.

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.

Un Lun Dun

I think I may be on a young adult fantasy kick. Recently I read the first and, so far, only two books in Ursula Le Guin's new fantasy series and right now I am reading Un Lun Dun by China Mieville. I'm intrigued by Mieville's writing. He writes urban/modern fantasy. Generally that is fantasy outside of what you may consider traditional fantasy. I would group him in with Michael Swanwick, Sean Stewart and Kelly Link. I own his short story collection Looking for Jake. I have not finished the book but the stories I have read have really impressed me with the pure imagination that went into them.

Un Lun Dun is the story of two teenage girls who live in London and have adventures in a city that is a magical mirror of London called unLondon (hence the title). unLondon is not merely a reflection of London, it turns out the two cities exchange everything from clothing styles to garbage to enemies. The abcity (as it's called in the novel) is filled with as many variations of talking animals, bizarre humans or hybrids of the two that Mieville could dream up.

The city is being threatened by what is left of the Great London Smog of 1952. The girls appear in unLondon apparently to fill long kept prophecies. Instead of following what could easily be the usual journey of a hero in fantasy story Mieville starts throwing curveballs immediately. Nothing is as it's supposed to be and that's where the fun starts. Mieville directly attributes Lew Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland as an inspiration. Probably because the debt is so obvious that he wanted to be the first to make the comparison.

He obviously had a lot of fun writing this. Some of the citizens of unLondon are fantastic enough to almost be beyond words. He's not afraid to go on little rampages of description when going on about the many strange denizens of unLondon. He also has the ability to give a place the right amount of strangeness with just a few words like this scene witnessed by the two girls in an unLondon open market, "They ran...past what looked like an argument at a honey stall between a bear in a suit and a cloud of bees in the shape of a man." At this point in the book there are two drawings, one of the bear in a suit and the cloud of bees in the shape of man. Throughout the book there are many inspired drawings of characters we encounter and they are all drawn by Mieville. There's a particularly great illustration of a carnivorous giraffe that you really should see.

I hope to have this book finished by tomorrow night so I can move on to the new Anchee Min book called The Last Empress. It's a sequel to Empress Orchid, a book I loved when I read it a couple of years ago.

An experiment

Starting on the 27th of March there should be a link to this page from the Morrsion Regional Library section of the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County page. I decided to try and get this to happen after I decided to starting updating this page recently. I mean, a guy can never have enough blogs can he? Mainly I'll be using this blog to cross post something from my personal blog that has to do with reading, writing or library work in general. The reason I haven chosen not to link to my personal blog is because that particular blog uses dirty words now and then. I guess there is nothing particularly wrong with dirty words as a whole, they've done nicely for George Carling, but I assumed that the library would prefer to link to an employee's blog that didn't drop certain bombs now and then. OK, all the time.

Noir

I think I read my first noir fiction over the weekend. I read "Driver" by James Sallis. I had never heard of Sallis until I read the comic by the Unshelved guys. I had been thinking about reading a piece of noir fiction for a while ever since Pollack mentioned the genre in his blog back when he was reading and editing noir fiction.

Not only was the novel noir it was Hollywood noir. Have I written the word 'noir' enough yet? The scene you seen in the Unshelved comic strip is the opening scene of the book. From there you follow the fascinating life story of the character just known as Driver from teenage runaway to respected stunt driver and getaway driver. Three story lines are weaved together in this clever novel. The story of his early life as a child and runaway, his day to day life as a stunt driver and L.A. resident and the story of the robbery gone wrong that we are in the middle of when the book opens.

This jumping around in time and place can be a little confusing at times but it really all ties together nicely because Driver is on just about every page. Only near the end when the main plot is tying up do we lose his viewpoint for a few pages here and there. By that time Driver is stuck so firmly in your head that he's there with you as your are reading.

The best book are the ones you wish hadn't ended so soon.

Pass the paper

One of the exercises the kids in my writing group most enjoy is the one where we pass a paper around and each person takes a turn adding a line to a story. There is a website attemtping to become the internet version of that. You can check it out here. It's called Ficlets.

Free! Audio! Books!

Yes, they are free. Yes, they are in public domain and yes, they are read by volunteers. Still, free audio books.