Bell, Book, & Blogzilla

Celebrating the Literature of the 1930s

2008-03-31T18:21:00.000-07:00

Last week at the library we celebrated some of the exceptional literary works written about and during the 1930s, the era of America’s Great Depression. Our “Depression Era” theme day provided a great opportunity to promote the library and to talk about some of the books we love. Don’t believe me? While I was waiting for the bus, I struck up a lively conversation with two transit regulars who commented on my “migrant worker” overalls. They were enthralled with our theme: “You look just like the train boss in Of Mice and Men,” one commented, “You know, the one who kicks George and Lenny off the train.”

Of course, that brings up the point: you really can’t talk about the 1930's Depression without mentioning John Steinbeck. For many American readers, Steinbeck's 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath—simply put—defines the era. To learn more about the history that shaped this moving novel and the research that went into it, read Steinbeck’s The Harvest Gypsies: On the Road to the Grapes of Wrath, comprised of seven newspaper articles Steinbeck published after touring migrant workers camps in 1936 and featuring Dorothea Lange’s stunning photographs of the era. For additional images, check out Restless Spirit: The Life and Work of Dorothea Lange. This beautifully-produced photo-biography presents a compilation of many of Lange’s most famous documentary-style portraits of America’s down-and-outs in the 1930s and 1940s, including her famous "Migrant Mother" that has since come to represent the face of 1930's dust-bowl poverty.

For the more light-hearted: take a peek at '30s fashions in Fashion Sourcebooks: The 1930s, by John Peacock with 281 fashion illustrations from 27 designers set out in a clear year-by-year progression with detailed descriptions of each design at the back of the book. For an overall feel of the times, The 1930s: from the Great Depression to the Wizard of Oz, by Stephen Feinstein, provides fine Eyewitness-style visuals and a general overview of the events of the decade, with chapters devoted to fashion, entertainments, sports, politics, and scientific advances of the era.

Finally, let's not forget some that the hardships of the '30s brought us some of the world's most unforgettable literature. Here are just a few of our favorites:

Currently out-of-print, Nelson Algren’s 1935 novel Somebody in Boots tells the story of Cass McKay, a gentle but illiterate, depression-era drifter who escapes the poverty, desperation, and violence of his Texas home, only to find more of the same riding the rails through the South and Midwest. The novel depicts a world of relentless starvation and brutality, culminating in a robbery that lands Cass in jail with a cast of other “undesirables.” The boots of the title are both symbols of authority and weapons wielded against the poor and the dispossessed in their struggle for survival. Reviewed by Lisa Tyler.

Harlem renaissance great Zora Neale Hurston's most controversial novel Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) details the life of one Janie Crawford, a fiercely independent young woman growing up in southern Florida in the '30s. Through three stormy marriages, a hurricane, and a terrifying brush with death when her husband contracts rabies, Janie finds strength in the face of poverty, illness, and tragedy. It may sound like a downer, but it's not: An intensely memorable coming-of-age story, a paean to independence, and a testament to strength in adversity, Their Eyes Were Watching God was criticized in Hurston's lifetime for its honest depiction of life in an all-black community. In the 1970s, Alice Walker revived interest in Hurston's nearly forgotten masterpiece, and now it's considered a classic. It's also one of my personal favorites. Reviewed by Constance O'Shea.

Secretrary of State Sam Reed celebrates the literature of The Great Depression with Collection Management Staff , Kelli Becker, Constance O'Shea, and Lisa Tyler. Photo by Lael Voeller, taken at the Sylvan Way Branch of Kitsap Regional Library.

Oh, Why Not? Books about Blogs

2008-03-22T22:32:00.000-07:00

For those interested in the continuing pursuit of 2.0 knowledge, here are a few new and intriguing books on all things blog and wiki.

Interested in making (or reading) a better book blog? The Bookaholics’ Guide to Book Blogs, by Rebecca Gillieron & Catheryn Kilgarriff, offers a strong bibliography of great blog reading and an abundance of advice on book industry blogs. The general reader will find an ample array of publisher and reviewer sites to choose from, while genre fans will be thrilled by the wide spectrum of specialized sites, catering to everything from horror to Harry Potter. Finally, anyone who has worked in a book store (or with the public for that matter) will enjoy the chapter on Bookshop and Booksellers’ Blogs.

Ultimate Blogs: Masterworks from the Wild Web, edited by Sarah Boxer, serves up a sampling of 27 of the Web’s most erudite offerings, with everything from political ponderings to ruminations on linguistics to a witty retelling of the Odyssey from the point of view of Odysseus’ sidekick. Skeptical about whether there’s really anything good out there in the blogosphere? This might be the book for you. If not, it’s still great bathroom reading.

Still wondering why Wikis might be important? Wikipatterns: A Practical Guide to Improving Productivity and Collaboration in Your Organization, by noted software researcher and author Stewart Mader, supplies strategies for starting a wiki, making it pertinent for everyone in your organization, and finally for inviting participants. Designed for Wiki novices and possibly even Wiki skeptics, Wikipatterns provides case studies and suggests a variety of Wiki uses, with a wealth of start-up tips, tools, checklists, and a clear structure that makes it accessible and relevant for anyone interested in exploring new ways to collaborate in the workplace.

What is Goth? Just ask at the library...

2008-03-13T16:54:00.001-07:00

Ask not what you can't learn at the library... That would be a really short conversation. Ask what you CAN learn. The list will be endless.

Just to dispel any question: the above slide show does feature a photo of one of those rare but wonderful Suburban Goth Librarians, the kind usually found perusing the industry reviews to make sure the library holds a rich, varied, up-to-the-moment book collection. (Hint: The Librarian is the one in black.) The rest of this scurvey lot of Medieval, Perky, Punkesque, and Wizardly Goths are not librarians but do in fact work in a library—ironically, a bright sunny library with comfy chairs, cheerful decor, a friendly engaging staff, and lots of wonderful, exciting programs and events for the whole community.

One day this cast of misfits decided to illustrate—by moping, dressing in black, painting weird curlicues around their eyes, and changing their names to things like Funeralisa, Tishella, Kali-Ma and Constantina the Dark—just how many things can be learned in a library. Yes, that's right. We—for I am one of them—became Goth for a day. (OK, for some of us, it's not that much of a stretch.) Want to learn more about the whole Goth thing? Check out our reading list:

Paint It Black: A Guide to Gothic Homemaking, by Voltaire (yes, crafts ARE involved)
The Goth Bible, by Nancy Kilpatrick
Goth Chic: A Connoisseur's Guide to Dark Culture, by Gavin Baddeley
Everything You Need to Know About the Goth Scene, by Kerry Acker
Goth craft : the magickal side of dark culture, by Raven Digitalis

On a related note: For a peek at the fusion of Goth culture and "Lolita" fashion in Japan, check out the startling photographs and funky design of Gothic and Lolita, by Masayuki Yoshinaga and Katsuhiko Ishikawa. Similarly, Gothic & Lolita Bible, Vol. 1, combines for the first time in the US four volumes of the Japanese mook (part fashion magazine/part book), Gothic & Lolita Bible. I haven't seen it yet, but I can't wait.

You might also want to read one of the earliest Gothic novels (Gothic novels are a must for all serious Goths), currently available in the KRL collection, The Castle of Otranto, by Horace Walpole. (Yes, dedicated Jane Austen fans, this is one of the works that Jane flogs so mercilessly in Northanger Abbey.) Other must-read fiction for Goths:

Oh My Goth! Version 2.0, by Voltaire
Dracula, by Bram Stoker
Tales of H.P. Lovecraft
Rebecca, by Daphne Du Maurier
Pretty much anything by Anne Rice

Not enough for you? Feel free to sulk about it.

Either that, or send me your Goth favorites. Meanwhile, prepare for your own Goth day by learning How to be Goth in seven easy steps. Until then, have a dark and miserable day.

Sincerely, Constantina Countess of the Dark

Little House on the Wide Sargasso Prairie

2008-03-09T10:04:00.000-07:00

A Return to Books about Books: Eileen Favorite Unleashes The Heroines on the American Landscape

Thirteen-year-old Penny Entwhistle, in Eileen Favorite’s new novel The Heroines, is growing up in the 1970s American Midwest on a steady diet of Watergate coverage and over-the-top dramatic heroines, from Scarlett O’Hara to Blanche du Bois. For those of us who grew up in similar places and times with similar reading lists, Penny is a familiar figure. One difference: for Penny, the fictional heroines come to weepy, irreverent life and set up residence at her family’s Iowa bed and breakfast, where they proceed to fret and moan and generally make themselves the disconsolate center of attention. In short, they behave like 13-year-olds. Anyone see a parallel here?

Please tell me Rosencrantz and Guildenstern really ARE dead this time.

For those weary of a current influx of literary endeavors where secondary characters take center stage, The Heroines provides a welcome departure. In Favorite’s rendering, the titular heroines, while central to their own stories, take a bucolic backseat to Favorite’s own heroine—especially after a midnight meeting in the woods with a dark stranger and an imprudent mention of the heroines lands Penny in The Unit, a dismal Bell Jar-esque hospital where rebellious and “hysterical” teenage girls are alternately bullied and bribed, albeit with little real success, into conventionally discreet behavior. Fascinating, funny, familiar, and informative—particularly for those being introduced to these literary ladies for the first time—The Heroines is an irreverent and entertaining coming-of-age story and a wonderful paean to the joys and, yes, the foibles of embracing literature and some of its more excessive dramatis personae in our lives. Heroines who make an appearance include: J.D. Salinger’s Franny Glass (of Franny and Zooey), Blanche Du Bois, Scarlett O'Hara, Madame Bovary, Wuthering Heights’ Catherine Earnshaw, and Hester (and Pearl) Prynne, among others. Light-hearted yet thoughtful, The Heroines also makes a great book group choice.

Lucky 13: Libraries and Social Networking Sites

2008-02-17T09:50:00.000-08:00

I recently attended the 2008 OCLC Western Conference in Seattle. OCLC is the Online Computer Library Center—the folks who bring us WorldCat—and this year's conference theme, in keeping with their new logo, was "The World's Libraries. Connected." The all-day event had a huge focus on how libraries can "build a bigger sign" in the community and on the world's information highway. Among many interesting facts, I learned the following: fully 13 percent of library users and potential library users surveyed in the Pew Internet & American Life Project expect - EXPECT - libraries to have a presence on social networking sites like Facebook. Seems like a phenomenal number to me.

Who uses the library?
What do library users want and expect?
What attracts people to libraries?
What makes them come back?

The OCLC conference addressed these questions and provided some interesting resources for answers. I hope to find time to share some of these next week. But for now, the sun is shining, and 8-Ball wants attention. Outside. Now. No crows invited. Crows like to gang up, corner 8-Ball under bushes, and taunt him. But that's another story for another day. Have a beautiful Sunday.

Facebook rocks with Books iRead

2008-02-10T10:22:00.000-08:00

Are you a fan of LibraryThing? Are you tired of keeping track of half a dozen little slips of paper with books you want to read?

If you answered yes to either of these questions, you might want to check out Facebook's Books iRead application. With Books iRead, not only can you build your library online, you can EASILY sort and organize your library around books you want to read, books you're currently reading, books you've read, books you own, and personal favorites. You can also recommend books to other friends on Facebook with one click, write online reviews, review lists of customized recommendations based on your favorites, and check out all your friends' favorites and reviews. Just brainstorming... you can even use iRead for finding read-alikes. For example, I put in M. John Harrison, and it recommended a similar writer of post-cyberpunk speculative fiction, China Mieville (both, as it happens, purveyors of what Martha Bayley at her recent Science Fiction Readers Advisory called The New Weird). How cool is that?

For those of you still hesitating to join Facebook, hesitate no more. The Books iRead application alone is worth the price of admission, a real must for bookophiles. Oh, and yeah, there IS no price of admission. Facebook is free.

Heinlein: My Struggles with the (quote/unquote) Master

2008-02-09T12:50:00.000-08:00

Or a thousand and one ways to offend....

Those blog-readers who occasionally glance at my side bar may notice that I appear to have been reading science fiction luminary Robert A. Heinlein’s The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress for about two months. I have to admit I’ve been struggling with this book for a long time now, and not to be disrespectful to an acknowledged master in the SF genre or to his many devoted fans, I am inclined to bestow on it what noted SF writer and critic Thomas M. Disch might call a St. Bradbury.

The feast of St. Bradbury, Disch says, is when critics, readers, and reviewers gather up all the books they’ve been “unable, despite their best intentions and firmest resolves, to read all the way to the end,” and ceremoniously dispose of them. Disch puts it a bit more caustically, but like I said I don’t want to be disrespectful, since, despite what for me is a difficult roadblock on the Heinlein highway, I acknowledge there must be something good to account for Heinlein’s amassed critical and popular following.

So what’s my problem? Let’s just say that with The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, considered by most critics and many readers to be Heinlein’s finest, the gender issue once again raises its ugly head. Not half a dozen pages can pass in this avowedly political novel, without the male characters’ lengthy verbal and visual ogling of the female characters, and the female characters then simpering, giggling, and cooing their appreciation of the men’s appreciation. And this is generally DURING any of said political and philosophical conversations, although fortunately not so much during the action sequences, comprised so far in my reading of political rallies meeting with government reprisal, strongly flavored by the novel’s 1960’s origins.

All of this “he looked her up and down, and whistled”—followed by four or five paragraphs of extraneous flirtation—wouldn’t be so bad if Heinlein didn’t seem so bent on generalizing about what women think (and, believe me, Heinlein has NO problem writing with paranormal authority on what women think) and how women are different–which so far in my reading mostly seems to involve a propensity for intuition and girlish gossip, occasional short-lived and inexplicable (yet adorable) flirtatious huffs, and an abiding love of compliments.

Now, don’t mistake me, Heinlein may be a product of his times, but he is no misogynist. To quote Disch once again, Heinlein is more than eager to grant women “equal wages and equal fun” and a certain naïve amount of mental acuity. To cite another of Heinlein’s well-loved novels, Stranger in a Strange Land presents a passel of female character, all of them nurses and secretaries, but at least he gives a few of them eidetic memories, plenty of smarts, and great job skills. Conveniently, as we are at length informed, they are also extremely attractive. But then, as Heinlein says in Moon, there are no ugly women.

The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress is the story of political dissent and government rebellion at a former penal colony on the moon; it is also the story of a computer achieving consciousness. Is the computer “Mike” really a Michelle? Heinlein’s characters must, of course, dicker about this, since they have crystal clear ideas about gender differences, even when talking about banks of electronic controls. For myself, I will continue to struggle with both the book and its ideas, at least until the traditional date set for the feast of St. Bradbury, August 22 (“the great man’s birthday,” as Disch reminds us), or until someone or something pushes me to read past my roadblocks. I am hoping with an idealistic postmodern gusto that our hero and heroine will finally realize that Mike/Michelle’s identity changes depending on his/her audience and that that in itself is an indication of the social constructs of gender reflected in the novel and its characters. Then, at last, I will be able to pitch my tent in Heinlein’s camp.

I am not holding out strong hopes for this eventuality. Still, if there are any readers out there who have read The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress and are up for debate, I am honestly open for discussion and ready to hear about the novel’s finer points, which I will then respectfully blog about to set the record straight. Push me to read a little faster. I am ready.

All quotes from Disch are from On SF (University of Michigan Press, 2005). Quote from The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress is from the Orb Edition (Tom Doherty Associates, 1997, copyright 1966), and appears on p. 71, among other pages.

Read more about Heinlein in the December 2007 Kitsap Sun: Heinlein: The Descent of a Sci-Fi Guru

Forget the chainsaw… more great tools for librarians (and the rest of us) to love

2008-01-31T16:11:00.000-08:00

Or at least like...

Once upon a time William Gibson posited the then-novel idea that human beings would spend most of their time jacked into computers. And guess what? In today’s post-post-cyberpunk world, we kind of do. More and more far-flung work teams work on complex projects with team members in outlying areas never meeting face-to-face. A growing educational trend reflects this shift with online classes and collaborative learning teams designed for working adults who never meet in the classroom, yet complete group assignments in entirely virtual environments. But whether you’re completing a project with someone in the next cubicle or with someone in China or with someone 20 miles away at another branch of the same organization, Writeboard is a great tool to know about.

Writeboard is a Web-based writing tool that allows teams (or individuals) to create and save multiple drafts of documents. Just from a teaching perspective, Writeboard looks like a good thing. It allows team members to write, revise, and share documents in real time, and it allows writers and contributors to compare different versions of a document and (presumably) agree on a final draft. For anyone who has ever had the frustrating experience of trying to read a Word document with revisions, or for anyone who has had his or her work edited with no “history” of the changes made, or even for employers or teachers wanting to evaluate multiple drafts and team input, Writepoint may be worth checking out.

On another note, Stikkit is a Web-based tool that gathers address books, tasks, memorandums, calendars, email, and more into one place. It does many of the things I currently do with Outlook (at work) and MSN (at home), but, since it’s Web-based like del.icio.us, it offers more convenient opportunities for using it from any location, rather than from just a work or personal computer. It also appears to have greater capabilities for tagging and organizing one’s life. Feeling disorganized? Then Stikkit may be worth a look.

Tools a Librarian (or a Teacher) Could Love...

2008-01-29T20:48:00.000-08:00

I just added two new applications—WorldCat and Easy Bibliography Generator—to my Facebook account, and I have just one thing to say: A-frickin’-mazing. Could I be more in love with this? No. Will I refer people to these applications? Yes. Consider yourselves my first refer-ees.

As many of you reading this will know, WorldCat is a comprehensive database allowing you to search for and find items in libraries all over the world. Here in the world of libraries, we already use WorldCat to find items that KRL doesn’t have. Now it seems like we could link this application to our library page in Facebook, making our site that much more vibrant for all those students and researchers out there in search of books. In case you’re worrying that it’ll send them to other libraries for books we have: not so much. It shows a list of owning libraries by proximity, starting with the closest library.

Easy Bibliography Generator is just what it sounds like. You plug in source information, and Easy Bibliographer Generator creates a properly formatted citation in any of a variety of citation styles, including MLA, Chicago Manual of Style, and even the dreaded and deeply stress-inducing APA style. (Yes, people, I teach a class at UOP that includes an intensive component on APA formatting, and it is evil. APA, I mean, not my class. Maybe the class, too. You’d have to ask my students.) Using this site, you can properly format bibliography entries for books, journals, Web sites, lectures, interviews, and more. For those of you referring patrons or students to style manuals, this is an outstanding tool to add to your repertoire.

Here Be Dragons, or Be Careful What You Drink

2008-01-25T17:40:00.000-08:00

Plus Musings on Twitter and the Language of Birds

There is an old Norse legend, perhaps best known through Wagner’s opera Siegfried, that he who drinks the blood of dragons will be gifted with the ability to understand the language of birds. In that legend, Sigurd (or Siegfried) slays the dragon Fafnir and then either bathes in and takes a celebratory chug-a-lug of his enemy’s blood or just accidently gets some blood in his mouth, depending on what folkloric version you favor. Either way, Sigurd doesn’t learn any pithy lessons about being careful what you put in your mouth, because he mostly gets a lot of helpful oracular advice from his feathered friends.

That said and Niebelung legends aside, perhaps my favorite representation of the dragon’s blood legend appears in Newbery Honor author Nancy Farmer’s wonderful blend of historical fiction and myth-inspired adventure, The Sea of Trolls, in which young Saxon Jack and his Viking captors encounter dragons, trolls, giant spiders, and more, when they embark on a series of adventures rooted in Norse legend. In Farmer’s representation, Viking berserker-initiate Jill becomes infected with dragon’s blood and discovers it’s a bit more of a mixed blessing than the story of Sigurd suggests. She learns that while the avian population might chirp up some good gossip, such as whether your enemies are massing over the next hill, mostly they just do a lot of what my dad used to call nattering and gromishing. That is to say, they talk a lot about very little.

So where am I headed with this? Well, Farmer’s musings on dragon’s blood and the language of birds provide as good a metaphor as any for the infamous social networking and micro-blogging service Twitter, currently under exploration for its value in the world of libraries.

While I see a certain potential value in Twitter as an up-to-the minute communication tool for far-flung and “virtual” work teams (virtual, that is, in the sense of teams working together in an online or virtual environment such as email, blogging, or twittering), Twitter can also represent a time and productivity drain for workplaces and a hotbed for missing and missed communications if not used properly or if too heavily or inappropriately relied upon as a communication tool. Still, keeping that concern in mind, there can be some big pluses for team Twittering. Just by way of example, while I was logged onto Twitter for krl2pt0 purposes I observed KRL Training Coordinator Bob Christensen’s of-the-moment update that he had posted new materials on the krl2pt0 site. Hmmm. Imagine if I were working on a time-sensitive project and looking for input from teammates. The entire work team could be instantly directed to Bob’s input and ideas even as he produced them. So… In a nutshell, Twitter strikes me as best designed for time-sensitive virtual team projects and committees. As far as the social aspect of Twitter goes, look no further than the metaphor of the birds to see what I think and whether I will use it that way.

Here Be Some Real Dragons: Bitterwood, by James Maxey
On a dragon-related note, I recently finished an outstanding new entry in the dragon/fantasy/science fiction genre, Bitterwood, by genre newcomer James Maxey. Read my brief review here. Call me a sucker for well-crafted words, but I am a big fan of the dragons of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and Ursula K. LeGuin’s A Wizard of Earthsea, who are both fascinated by and distracted by a little well-honed argument—well, at least in the Aristophanic sense.* Maxey’s articulate, sometimes contemplative, and often rhetorically-driven dragons—particularly the ultra-evil “murder god” Blasphet—fit the bill perfectly. Then again, if you're like my husband and you prefer your dragons to stick with pillaging and carnage, Maxey offers a healthy portion of that, too. Maxey's slow unfolding of remnants of misunderstood and forgotten technology in a post-apocalyptic future landscape will also attract fans of Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun and Book of the Long Sun, even as they remind us of the Arthur C. Clarke maxim that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” (Starred review in Publishers Weekly and Booklist.)

*In his comedy Clouds, Aristophanes posits a Socratic School where young Greek youths learn rhetoric to argue the Wrong Argument and defeat the Right Argument. His characters attend this school to learn to argue their debts away, and comic mayhem ensues. My Point? Dragons, like Aristophanes' students in Clouds, are known to value argument for the sake of argument and as a means to justify questionable (often monetary) ends.

I'm Ba-a-a-ack: What I Like about the Facebook (or Social Networking) Approach

2008-01-18T16:26:00.000-08:00

I’m going to be blunt. Libraries have a reputation in the World-At-Large of “do it my way or hit the highway.” Hence, wholly for the worse, we have the unfortunate cultural image ingrained on our collective minds of the stiff-backed, cardigan-clad, tight-bunned librarian with pursed lips and flaming eyes, hissing out the age-old commandment of QUIET in the library.

(Just for the record, I don’t know any librarians like that. And I do know quite a few librarians.)

Now I’m going to be short and sweet. It’s because of that unfortunate and generally unjustified bad rep of libraries and librarians that I like the idea of Facebook (or other Social Networking) for Libraries. Facebook puts the library out there, where many of our patrons and patrons-to-be already are, telling our story, promoting our resources, offering our services, and most importantly opening a dialog about what the library can do for us, right now, TODAY. And it’s not about being quiet. In fact, it’s a conversation that anyone in our network or community can join, requesting titles, recommending books, asking about services or events—even finding out who else among our friends will be there. Facebook gives libraries an avenue to advertise what they do best, and it’s all about opening up, sharing, learning, entertainment, having fun, finding information, and engaging with the world in a whole variety of ways—be it with homework help, joining a book group, attending children’s story times, meeting (or promoting) your favorite author, tracing your family tree, finding a long-lost and well-loved book/story/movie through a purchase request or Interlibrary Loan. The list goes on and on. Facebook puts libraries in the community, in the world, and on the map. It’s not the only way to get our story out there, but it is one way among many, and let’s face it, it’s where a big ol’ segment of library users and future library users already congregate, so to speak. That said, the more library events, cool links, and discussion groups that spring up on the library Facebook page, the better. Let’s face it, it’s a win-win situation.

Wiki'd

2007-12-30T11:15:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the New Year—well, almost. If I have been a silent blogger, it's because, in addition to preparing for the holidays, I've been boning up on how to start a nit-picky Wiki. I say "nit-picky" only because, like some of the aspects of blogging, there are various little things you have to fiddle with to make page navigation easier and to make the Wiki at least sort of visually appealing (and I do mean sort of). On a difficulty level, Wikis are about the same as blogs (but, again, more nit-picky). As far as flexibility and visual artistry, I am not thrilled with the Wiki medium. But, hey, maybe I just have a lot to learn.

Meanwhile, please check out the results of my fiddling by taking a peak at Collection Management's new Reader's Advisory Wiki. You will find there a featured review by non-fiction selector Gail Goodrick, links to blogs by KRL selectors, links to reviews, some really cool book sites, and more. Now, before you say nay to our site or to anything you find or don't find on it, I hope you will remember we are just getting this going. This is our first stab at this and as such, fully in the true nature of the Wiki concept, is a work in progress. We still have much to fix, add (such as tags), and do. Also, our capacity to have anyone change or add to the Wiki is limited right now, but we are working on it. For now, if there is anything you think we should post or add to this Wiki, please contact the Wiki administrator—oh hey, right now that's me. So e-mail me, reply to this post, or be truly wiki'd and scroll down the Wiki's front page and click on Contact Wiki Owner under the Wiki Information tab.

Still wondering "Why Wiki?" Here are a few books to peak discussion. You may not agree with everything you read in them. You may not even finish them, choosing instead to pick around in them like an after-holiday turkey. (I confess that's what I did.) Whatever your reading method, I guarantee these books will raise some questions and maybe even provide a few answers.

Wikinomics, by Don Tapscott. Can well-made Wikis impact business significantly by reducing things like email and meeting time by 50 to 75 percent? Whether it's accurate or not, this book is food for thought and definitely a window into the direction the world is taking. You may not agree with Tapscott style or his conclusions, but to ignore this phenomenon is to be left behind.

The Wisdom of Crowds, by James Surowiecki. Under the right circumstances, are groups really smarter than the smartest people in them? Read Surowiecki's 2004 study on what it takes to make a "wise crowd"—and, believe me, it isn't just everybody gets input; there needs to be, among other things, a method for aggregating all those ideas—and see if you agree with his conclusions.

All through the house

2007-12-20T18:07:00.000-08:00

"She waited to pounce with shining eyes and switching tail. She waited with shining eyes for something to fall, to tinkle, to crash, to break..." ~from A Pussycat's Christmas, by Margaret Wise Brown

If you started with this blog at the beginning, you will recall that Megzilla is my mother's cat and the inspiration for this blog. Why? Because she's a thinker, and I'm pretty sure she surfs the net at night to come up with ways to move hefty household objects to new and perplexing locations during the night.

Since Meg is the muse behind the blog, I thought I should regale you with a few of Meg's favorite reads for the holiday season. As may be apparent, I consider these Meg's favorites not because I have the least idea what goes on behind Meggy's gimlet gaze; indeed, I wish I knew. I imagine these are her favorites because they remind me of her, and also, frankly, because they are quite wonderful, both in concept and story and in the realization of vivid language through thoughtful illustration. Whether you have children at home or are simply young-at-heart, I urge you to take a look at these holiday classics, both penned by widely beloved authors. I am sure Megzilla loves them. After all, she is smart.

A Pussycat's Christmas, by Margaret Wise Brown. Illustrated by Anne Mortimer. Melodic language brings the sights, sounds, and smells of the season to life, as one black-and-white cat (a Megzilla look-alike) watches her family prepare for Christmas. Cat-lovers will enjoy Pussycat's encounter with tissue, tinsel, Christmas stockings and snow; readers everywhere will love the magical prose and jewel-like illustations that capture the juxtaposed excitement and stillness of Christmas. Brown is the author of Goodnight Moon and countless other children's classics.

The Christmas Day Kitten, by James Herriot. Illustrated by Ruth Brown. Anyone who has ever taken in and loved a stray, will be warmed by Herriot's story of stray tabby Debbie, who one Christmas morning brings her kitten to the "only place of comfort and warmth she had ever known" in plumpish Mrs. Pickering's farmhouse. Sadly, Debbie is dying, but the kitten grows to be a most remarkable and well-loved cat--a true Christmas miracle. Ruth Brown's illustrations perfectly capture the warmth and love of a Yorkshire country Christmas.

Have a safe, happy, and joyful holiday, and don't forget to let me know your favorite seasonal reads. See you after Christmas.

Illustration (above) from A Pussycat's Christmas

Sorry, No Luddites Here

2007-12-19T18:27:00.000-08:00

Collection Management Gets Down, Gets Wiki

I would like to dispel an unfortunate rumor that this library’s Collection Management Department houses any individuals with Luddite tendencies. We are actually all computer literate (we have to be for our jobs), and many of us blog, have RSS feeds and del.icio.us accounts, and use (and love) LibraryThing. That is in addition to the computer and Web-intensive work we do every day.

Our department is in the process of putting together ideas and material for a Collection Management Wiki, which we will begin posting next week. (Sorry it can be no sooner, but we also have lives outside the library.) The focus of our department’s Wiki will be Reader’s Advisory. We are all readers, and, as you know, many in our department are Librarians and selectors, while others have advanced degrees in literature. However, educational level and titles aside, as our Library Training Day speaker reminded us, ANYONE in the library can do Reader’s Advisory, and all of us are ready and eager to share. Here are a few of the features we hope to include on our Wiki:

Featured reviews
Links to book-related blogs (internal and external)
Book group information
Publishers Weekly 5 star reviews and other industry review information
Genre lists and reviews
DVD and other media lists and review information

Please note that, while the comments of this blog reflect only the opinions and tone of the blogger, we are all excited about this. As one of our team put it, “This is what libraries should do. It's a great service to patrons and it markets our collection. In short, it adds value.”

Those contributing content and discussion on the CM Wiki include, in egalitarian alphabetical order: Martha Bayley, Kelli Becker, John Fossett, Gail Goodrick, Tish Hodge, Michelle Mason, Constance O’Shea, Lisa Schureman, Lisa Tyler, and Lael Voeller.

All Over the World

2007-12-13T18:07:00.000-08:00

A hush has settled on this house by four in the morning. 8-ball sleeps at my feet, paws folded, making an occasional delicate grunt of happiness if I reach down to pet him. Magic spills a glossy diagonal across my side of the bed. I know if I touch him he will awake, purring, to nuzzle me, walk on my hair, drool lovingly on my pillow, and intermittently poke my face with a velvet-padded paw. (Magic is 100% a Mama’s boy and also just a teensy bit thick, as they say.) Across the hall, a single orange paw and rumpled tail show where Amber has bedded down for the night in the cat condo.

My husband breaths quietly beside me, and the only other sound is the quiet suserration of an ocean sounds CD by my husband’s pillow. Outside, a glimpse of Christmas Town beckons from across the cul-de-sac, where our neighbors, both Wal-Mart employees, have installed every purchasable holiday fantasia in an ongoing spirit of keeping American consumerism and the feng shui of Snoopy’s doghouse alive. And yet, at this hour and across this distance, the 8-foot blow-up snowmen and tinsel-bedecked caravan of shimmering packages look both fantastical and somehow even lovely amid their twinkle of festive lights.

In spite of the unlikeliness of the hour, my brain has decided I’m done sleeping for the night. Might as well get up and read in the pre-dawn stillness. Today, I am finishing About a Boy, in order to fulfill a request for holiday theme reviews and secure my rights, per Hannah's DVD blog, to the Good Ol' Virginia Killer Egg Nog recipe. Thanks to Hannah’s eloquence, I am sure THE recipe will change my life, or at least significantly alter a worthwhile percentage of holiday evenings, so here goes.

Professional rebound-guy and incurable fantasist Will Freeman has made a career of avoiding committed relationships. (“We always thought you had hidden depths,” his friends say. “No,” says Will. “I really am this shallow.”) To facilitate his quest to meet attractive but lonely ladies, Will invents a two-year-old son and joins a group called SPAT (Single Parents Alone Together). “Children democratize beautiful single women,” Will theorizes, thereby making them more likely to date do-nothings like himself. But instead of the blissful series of brief but uplifting encounters he imagines springing from his new parental persona—curiously, Will sees his half-truths and fantasies as a harmless way to meet and provide interim solace to jaded women on their way to their next real relationship—Will finds himself making an unlikely friend of 12-year-old uber-geek Marcus. As the consequences of Will’s fictionalized fatherhood begins to catch up with him (note, concepts like cause-and-effect and speculation beyond tomorrow’s lunch do not appear among Will’s strengths), Will finds he has as much to learn from Marcus about family, honesty, and caring as Marcus has to learn from him about being cool.

Iffy and potentially clichéd as the above scenario may sound, About a Boy has a certain charm. Yes, Will embodies an extreme version of the oft-cited male capacity for avoiding any discussion around or expression of ucky relationship stuff. Still, as in his earlier novel High Fidelity, author Nick Hornby has a knack for capturing the quirks and foibles of modern mid-‘90s relationships, both those that are a product of, in ‘90s lingo, the Mars/Venus rift, and those arising from a second generation of “hippie” idealists at odds with a self-avowed Me generation, and making them feel deeply personal. (The scenes, for example, where Will begins to feel at home at Marcus’ family’s geeky Christmas gathering are priceless.*) In spite of—perhaps because of— flaws, his characters are understandable, even unlikable: even when they mess up royally, we can’t help but root for them.

On the other side of the afore-mentioned Mars/Venus rift, Helen Fielding’s novel Bridget Jones’s Diary spans a single year, from Christmas to Christmas, in the life of 30-something “singleton” Bridget Jones on her permanent quest to both form a functional f***wittage-free relationship and lose 20 pounds. As good a revisionist version of Jane Austen as I’ve seen, Bridget Jones is uninhibited, laugh-out-loud funny, and a rockin’ good retelling of Pride and Prejudice with modern twists throughout. The generation of women who love the BBC Pride and Prejudice with Colin Firth will find much to relate to in this feel-good holiday read, including (you guessed it) a hero named Darcy, a silly, flighty mum in the spirit of Mrs. Bennett and Lydia rolled into one, plenty of social satire, and a healthy post-modern touch of self-reflexive humor, since Bridget herself is a fan of the BBC’s Firth-fest. “It struck me as being pretty ridiculous to be called Mr. Darcy and to stand on your own looking snooty at a party,” Jones muses on meeting her Mr. Darcy. “It’s like being called Heathcliff and insisting on spending the entire evening in the garden shouting ‘Cathy’ and banging your head on a tree.”

One word of advice on Bridget Jones, though. Don’t read this book if you are on a serious diet. Not only will Bridget’s occasional (justified, of course) 4,000 calorie binge days make you feel okay about breaking your diet, you will find yourself possessed of an undeniable soul-searching emptiness that can only be filled by chocolate croissants.

So, Hannah, what do you say? Enough to make you hand over the recipe? It’s nearly the New Year, and there’s partying to be had! Just don't forget you are always invited.

**Watching the film version of About a Boy, my husband—NOT, I should point out, a geek—was particularly struck by the holiday party scenes with Marcus' geek family. "I can relate," he remarked drily... but also fondly. We geeks are a pleasant lot, after all.

8-Ball's Cabin Fever

2007-12-05T17:35:00.000-08:00

What’s on your pet's reading list this Christmas? Let me know your feline and canine fictional favorites.

Just as I was beginning to really groove on the idea of having a moat around the ol’ castle, the waters receded and we are once again able to venture out into the yard—that is, if we don’t mind sinking an inch or six. With this newfound freedom after five long days of being first snow- and then monsoon-bound, 8-ball—whom you may remember from my previous post as our resident Boston Terrier-in-cat’s-clothing—immediately ventured forth in spite of a lifelong fear of alligators, bog critters, unfamiliar noises, and people he doesn’t know, only to return posthaste to leave muddy cat-prints all over the hall, dining room, bedroom, kitchen, and foyer. Ah, the joys of pet "ownership."

8-ball’s speedy retreat to the comforts of hearth and home belies a tortuous five days of feline cabin fever, spent first gazing in rapt fascination at snowflakes the size of golf balls, later shifting his stare accusingly from the sheeting rain to the ineffectual human denizens of the household who proved inexplicably errant in halting the deluge, and finally scampering hurriedly to the nearest lap at the first sound of knees creaking into a seated posture. During this time, 8-ball ventured out only once, and then only to determine once and for all that snow is (a) wet, (b) cold, and (c) kinda scary.

The bulk of his weather-bound captivity (when not staring pointedly at the catnip box, jumping on the kitchen counter for attention, or biting his brother Magic's neck—also for attention—and hanging on like a very determined rat terrier with a really juicy rat*) was spent rolling playfully, all four legs akimbo, on whatever either my husband or I happened to be reading/doing at the time. (It should be noted that in spite of a considerable amount of time spent strolling across computer keyboards, 8-ball has proven completely incapable of randomly producing Hamlet.) With so much time spent around books, newspapers, and computers, though, it’s only natural that 8-ball picked up a few favorites:

Three Stories to Read to Your Cat and Three Stories to Read to Your Dog. The beauty of these wonderful little volumes by Sara Swan Miller is their inherent cattiness and dogginess. If cats and dogs could write stories, this is what they’d write. (8-ball’s rating: 5 stars for subject matter that appeals to cats.)

Walter, the Farting Dog. OK, it’s not exactly Finnegan’s Wake, but James Joyce might well approve of William Kotzwinkle’s tale of a gas-plagued pooch (not to mention its numerous scatological sequels) with surreal illustrations by Audrey Coleman, focusing largely on the gust of wind from Walter’s backside. Rest assured anyone under the age of five will be laughing out loud. (8-ball’s rating: 5 stars for accurate depiction of people’s extreme over-reaction to dropping a harmless biscuit or two. Constance's rating: Er...)

Magic Thinks Big, by Elisha Cooper. A testament to the power of imagination, solid and contemplative tabby Magic debates whether to go outside or stay indoors in this charmingly illustrated tale of the meditative power of cats. (8-ball’s rating: 4 stars for providing a potentially viable wishlist of “42 Things [8-ball] Might Want to Do This Year.” Minus 1 star for naming the cat Magic, instead of 8-ball. See earlier comments on Magic.)

Desser, the Best Ever Cat, by Maggie Smith. OK, maybe it’s not 8-ball’s favorite, but it is mine. An invitingly-illustrated tribute to the lifelong friendships between people and pets, Smith’s tale recounts the joy of growing up with a beloved pet. On a more solemn note, it also provides a thoughtful handling of the grief that accompanies that pet’s loss in old age. A thoughtful and reassuring story for children (or adults) coping with grief, Desser serves as a wonderful reminder of the unconditional love and companionship pets bring us throughout our lives. (8-ball’s rating: 5 stars because Desser looks like 8-ball and is the center of attention, which is as it should be. Constance’s rating: Desser, the Best EVER Cat Book.) .

The essense of cat nature: Illustration page from Desser, the Best Ever Cat

*Magic, being larger, solider, and more lethargic, generally ignores such vampire-inspired tactics, preferring instead to wait with Gandhi-like patientce for someone to come pry 8-ball off. Many are the mornings I emerge from the shower to find 8-Ball and Magic locked in tableaux.

Welcome to the Bog

2007-12-03T19:44:00.000-08:00

Yes, that's right, I said bog, not—as one might have expected given my usual inclination towards puerile punning at any price—blog.

As torrential rainfall has sent library staff and patrons home early and turned my usually pleasant backyard into a fascinatingly squelchy bogland from which I expect at any moment to see water moccasins and alligators rise, I simply haven't the heart to write about any subject more watery than a large blended and therefore water-(in the form of ice, that is)-filled margarita. Wish I had one, but I don't.

Hence, the lack of promised desert island books, and instead a brief exploration and exceptionally-limited bit of commentary on YouTube (which I must say rather let me down on good bog videos). In short, I am not a big fan of this particular time-sucking vaccuum, but more power to its users and viewers if they are indeed bringing about social and political change with a medium that barrages its fan base with dozens (hundreds?) of untalented, uninteresting, and frequently irrelevant video entries for every search. Yeesh, my attention span is too short for this! Maybe I am a product of the MTV generation, but I can't sit through even one minute of most of these five to eight minute pieces. I have better things to do.

That said, I fully acknowledge that YouTube has created some media stars, sometimes even because said individuals are talented or actually have something important to share with the world. Happily, many, many clips are short, to-the-point, and even dare-I-say funny, and therefore of some value that apparently-humorless individuals like myself don't truly understand or appreciate (seemingly at least, given my impassioned anti-tube rant of mere moments ago).

However, to prove my point on the laugh quotient and show that I do indeed have a sense of humor, I invite you to enjoy a brief YouTube video that embodies my husband's usual morning wake-up call using the all-natural feline alarm clock. I am happy to report this is not my regular wake-up experience, as I rise before the drama begins, and besides our cats know such guerrilla tactics don't work on someone who sleeps with a special pillow for putting over her head at moments like these.

More of a dog person? The following video has made me rethink my belief that my husband and I should get a Boston Terrier as an attractively well-matched companion for our cat 8-ball:

On a related side note, I am more than half convinced that 8-ball is a rather poorly disguised Boston Terrier. (For more pictures of 8-ball at work and play, check out my side bar.)

As final proof that I put some time into this assignment, I offer the following tidbits on Kitsap Regional Library's infamous salmon video by commending the creative use of Jaws music in the soundtrack and Rory's very fine preference of Classic over other forms of Coke.

LibraryThing! You Make My Heart Sing

2007-11-25T17:14:00.000-08:00

As I set out on the next leg of my quest for library 2.0 literacy, it has occurred to me that our library’s leadership may have a lot to thank my husband for. For instance, he has been known, on those rare and special occasions when I am being particularly annoying or whiny at home, to encourage me to blog by gently suggesting I go do my “library thing.”

Yes, there it is, folks, that’s this week’s limpid segue into the realms of krl2pt0.

I am not going to sing the praises of the many beguiling applications unique to LibraryThing. I’ll let you discover whatever particular charms it may have for you through your own explorations. I will, however, because I am not a totally mean person, tell you of its potential and immediate lures for the likes of moi. If, like me, you are one of those people who checks out more library books than you actually have time to read, you may find a parallel allure in the world of LibraryThing.

LibraryThing strikes me as uniquely suited to making long lists of books and grouping them with simple (and easily edited) tags that alert you as to why you placed those particular books on your list in the first place. For me, this appeal is primarily in the realm of “books I’d like to read” which usually aggregate in randomly penned notes in betwixt calendar pages, on the backs of bookmarks, and scattered throughout the pages of my journal. If these hastily scrawled notes (or at least the books they represent) do not make it into my library holds (all of which subsequently—and annoyingly—arrive at the same time), the papers themselves are usually lost to the winds of time, sometimes with the precise authors and titles irretrievably and tantalizingly mired in the specially fossilizing information tarpits of my mind, never to be seen or clearly remembered again.

LibraryThing offers an alternative that actually betters the Amazon wishlist by allowing you to tag your booklist with descriptors that you can easily change as books move from wishlist status to read, and then voila! You have that list of books you’ve read that we in the library world are so often encouraged to keep. Following that, you can post reviews, join discussion groups, peruse readers’ reviews, and even get suggestions based on what you’ve tagged and purportedly enjoyed. Not too different in some ways from Amazon (or from its movie equivalent Netflix), only without the sales impetus and the industry reviews, and with a more dynamic social networking aspect. No fear, though, the LibraryThing site links to the Library of Congress and to Amazon, so if you want to go to Amazon and dredge up industry reviews, you can.

On a final note, LibraryThing offers a great tool for library or readers advisory bloggers, the ubiquitous LibraryThing widget. The widget allows you to REALLY EASILY (praise the krl2pt0 powers-that-be for finally giving me an assignment I could actually, as opposed to theoretically, do in half an hour, not counting the blog time) add a link on your blog site to any grouping of books on your booklist, based on tags, random selection, or recent additions to your LibraryThing queue.

That said, slide your eyes up a notch and you will see two book jackets and one audiobook cover (all with a desert island theme) with links powered by LibraryThing widgetry. This particular selection is inspired by KRL media buyer John Fossett’s blog on that classic game of Desert Island Discs and serves as a lead in to my next blog entry, in which I will dish up my own literary take on the subject. Until then, I fully expect you to be thinking of what books you’d want to have along if you were stranded on a desert island. I mean it. I want to hear from you.

Literary Feasts: Words to be Thankful for

2007-11-21T16:53:00.000-08:00

Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing. ~Harper Lee

We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures. ~Thornton Wilder

On the eve of this most American of holidays, I invite you to enjoy one of our most American of writers laureate, Louisa May Alcott, with her funny and festive holiday tale, An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, presented in its entirety at this link. An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving is story of the seven Bassett children's adventures, peccadillos, and final heart-warming "success" (the success may be a bit qualified in terms of actual flavor) in preparing the family's Thanksgiving meal, after Mom and Dad head out to nurse their ailing Grandmother. Whether shared before or after your holiday's more bountiful festivities, this engaging country story makes a perfect family read.

The Pilgrims made seven times more graves than huts. No Americans have been more impoverished than these who, nevertheless, set aside a day of thanksgiving.~ H. U. Westermayer

Thanksgiving Day, a function which originated in New England two or three centuries ago when those people recognized that they really had something to be thankful for - annually, not oftener - if they had succeeded in exterminating their neighbors, the Indians, during the previous twelve months instead of getting exterminated by their neighbors, the Indians. Thanksgiving Day became a habit, for the reason that in the course of time, as the years drifted on, it was perceived that the exterminating had ceased to be mutual and was all on the white man's side, consequently on the Lord's side; hence it was proper to thank the Lord for it and extend the usual annual compliments. ~Mark Twain

Have a safe and happy Thanksgiving

The return of Megzilla

2007-11-19T19:46:00.001-08:00

It's been a busy week, getting ready for Thanksgiving, and a long time since we've heard from Megzilla. Given that, I thought I'd share something that always makes me thankful: Megzilla and her adorable litter mates, Sigma, Rho, and Psi (the three "siameses"), and angelic tabby Delta Pi. You just don't get cuter than that. Enjoy the slideshow.

Please check out my updated November 9 blog entry, as well. There, you will find another slide show (a lot less cute, let me tell you now) and a picture of my husband with a goat. That's right. A goat. Come on, you know you'll have to look now.

Flickr... or Fade?

2007-11-09T17:04:00.001-08:00

Why leave a legacy when you can share your photos today?

What do you think happens to archived blogs? Do they float out there in cyberspace forever--just waiting for future generations of archeologists and genealogists to crack them open and begin exploring the brightly colored contents of our forgotten lives like so many Easter eggs?

Something tells me that is not the case. Something tells me our blogs, all our carefully collected, scanned, tagged, labelled, and described photos and words could go at any time, like so many Web sites before them, whether by design or by accident. At a recent Interlibrary Loan conference, for example, a Web 2.0 speaker remarked that she had lost all her del.icio.us links at one point, through some internal del.icio.us error. "Be sure and have them backed up," she said. How? I wondered at the time. As bookmarks? Heaven forbid. That would be going backwards. OK. OK. Maybe I'm the Voice of Doom. Or, more accurately, the Snotty, Sarcastic Voice of Doom. Or maybe I just need a new screen identity, blogging persona, nom de blog, or user ID—for next week's assignment: GlassHalfEmptyGirl. Is that taken? Whatever. Read on. It gets more positive towards the end.

Whatever the case, when I explore photo-sharing sites like Flickr, that is what I think about. Flickr, I would propose, is all about today, people, not yesterday, not tomorrow. Sites like these, I think, will come and go, occasionally losing stuff along the way, no doubt. Is that good or is it bad? Who knows? On the one hand, we have access to, and can share, many photos, places, and people we might not otherwise see. I submit, for example, the tale of Cornelius O'Shea's photo album. Cornelius O'Shea is my husband's grandfather, and he kept surprisingly meticulous and beautiful scrapbooks and photoalbums in the 1920s and 1930s, wonderland windows onto worlds with flappers, cross-dressing ladies, vintage ferryboats, family-style roadside diners of yesterday, and some of those honkin' big bad-ass Automobiles that could push upwards of 30 miles per hour. (Cornelius also kept every single speeding ticket he ever got--and there must be at least 50, including personal notes from the local police reminding him not to frighten the neighbors by roaring down the local roads at such breakneck velocities--proving definitively, once-and-for-all, that the need for speed must be genetically passed along the male line.) Anyway, Corny O'Shea's legacy lives in the possession of one person right now, and that person's not really sharing it much. With Flickr all those photos, pages, and even the speeding tickets I suppose could be scanned, posted, and shared with sons and daughters, cousins, sisters, and others who have never seen them or who would like to remember good old Corny, now that he is gone, through his photo collection. Wonderful.

On the flip side of that scenario, I've found Flickr to be rather time intensive. Am I going to have time for scrapbooking-for-posterity if I spend all my time scanning, downloading, titling, and describing my photos online, not to mention figuring out how to navigate Flickr and properly tag, create sets, and group my photos? Actually... the answer to that could be yes, although a firm and resounding way-cool would require a lot more investigation (that probably isn't going to happen) on my part. However, aside from the obvious stack of photos, files on your hard drive, and back-up disk (just wait, they'll probably replace the technology that gave you that disk, and then it'll be obsolete, too), Flickr appears to offer some interesting options for packaging your online photo albums into books, cards, and more. You may decide to explore it further, but whatever you decide to do, be sure and back up your materials, lest we all become ghosts in the machine.

P.S. In case you are wondering about the photo of the young man with the goat that heads up this blog entry, in the spirit of keeping alive the legacy at least of Cornelius O'Shea, that is my husband at about age 10 with his goat Sundance. As long as I was on the subject of photos—lost in the void of cyberspace or otherwise—I thought I would throw this one to the winds of posterity, and see what happened. No special reason. I just like this photo and have no other venue for sharing it. I should add that I always knew if I ever got married I would marry a man who loved animals. And I did. If you are really a sucker for romantic stories, ask me about me about that one some day. For now, I invite you to view photos of our wedding day on Flickr. Please be kind and bear in mind we went from work to wedding that day. No time to have my hair done and all that frilly stuff: Wedding of the century—NOT

Invasion of the Podcasters

2007-11-02T16:56:00.000-07:00

For those of us who grew up with stories like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the word “podcast” has an ominous tone. I mean, think about it for a second. Roll the words slowly and majestically off your tongue. Podcast. Pod people. Now ask yourself who’s making all those podcasts out there. Kind of gives you a Twilight Zone feeling doesn’t it? And I’m just talking about the word. I haven’t even gotten to the content or purpose of podcasting yet. Scary, huh?

Heh, heh. Just kidding. That was kind of mean of me, wasn’t it?

In this day and age, with more and more adults returning to school or engaging in new training programs—whether to advance in their professions or just for the sense of purpose and accomplishment that learning gives—it’s important that educators find ways to accommodate the working adult’s busy schedule in the classroom environment. Podcasts strike me as one viable classroom or lecture alternative (probably best used in conjunction with other learning tools, such as asynchronous classroom forums and assignment blogs) in that they allow individuals to learn at home at the hours most convenient to their schedules—even, potentially, while doing other household chores. Podcasts also help engage different types of learners in an otherwise primarily visual online classroom environment.

Podcasts come in many forms, and—as with audiobooks, if I may say so—much depends on the narrator. Some podcasts, such as PLCMC's 7 1/2 habits of Highly Successful Lifelong Learners are essentially PowerPoints, with a narrator reading along with and occasionally embellishing on a series of slides. Personally, in the absence of a really engaging presenter, I find this type of podcast rather unappealing, as my tendency is to just read the slides, and then click next while the narrator is still limping placidly forward like a disinterested cow with no collie to herd it towards the barn.

Other podcasts are more like audiobooks or audiojournals, if you will, and these I find much more engaging, as I can cook dinner, clean house, and do dishes while listening. (Ah, multi-tasking is my friend.) Having been charged to find a podcast that interests me, I searched the internet until I found Escape Pod, “The Science Fiction Podcast Magazine” for readers and writers of science fiction. Who knew there was such a thing? Now I can listen to reviews, preview the writing of hot new authors, and even download “podiobooks” to enjoy on my afternoon walk. Will the wonders never cease?

Trick or Treat? A blogful of literary goodies to celebrate the season

2007-10-31T20:55:00.000-07:00

Happy Halloween and time for one last wave of the pointy witch’s hat (between Trick-or-Treaters) to all those seasonal favorites—hauntings and spirits and witches, oh my! One of my favorite books with a splendidly mist-shrouded All Hallow’s feel is John Harwood’s wonderfully gothic exploration of the traditional ghost story in The Ghost Writer. The Ghost Writer is a gorgeous puzzle box of intertwining tales, all connected by an overarching mystery in which timid librarian Gerard seeks answers to his inscrutable pen pal's strange past and his own family's somewhat shady history through a series of odd Victorian manuscripts—ghost stories, of course. The manuscripts, each one a perfectly formulated exercise in gothic style, provide clues to the mysteries in Gerard’s life, but will they help him in time to save him from his family’s ghosts? Read it and see.

For a complete change of pace, check out my absolute favorite book about witches, Lolly Willowes, or The Loving Huntsman, by Sylvia Townsend Warner. A full eighty years before Harry Potter, poet Warner penned this rather charming country novel about timid Edwardian spinster, Laura (a.k.a. Lolly) Willowes, who shakes off the conventions of her day to become a witch. Harry Potter fans beware—there really isn’t much magic practiced in this one. Published in 1926, the pace is leisurely, the writing precise and poetic, but—witchcraft aside—the real thrust of the novel is its highly unconventional celebration of freedom from social constraints that, in those days, often relegated women of Lolly’s station to unpaid household laborers. Fans of Barbara Pym's writing might also enjoy this salute—with a little spin of its own—to the excellent women of a bygone era.

Let's Get Digital, Digital

2007-10-27T17:36:00.000-07:00

I am here to report that I need never leave my home office again. That’s right, people, I did my homework and then some. I set up an account and subscribed to a dozen or so RSS feeds. (See below.) I listened to a podcast. I downloaded an audiobook from the library catalog. (More on those in my next post.) I even did 200 or so updates and countless system restarts so that I could install the latest version of Windows Media Player, which actually allows me to watch Netflix movies right here at my desk. Am I rockin’ or what?

Incidentally, several of these feats (particularly the Windows Media Player) were achieved with no small level of frustration and with really big bucketsful—we’re talking aircraft carriers of truckloads of buckets—of patience. At one point, my husband took over the installation just to relieve me of the sheer monotony of update, reboot, install—each iteration of which was followed by a message stating “before you can install XYZ, you must first yada yada yada.” (I regret to say strong language may have been used during this exercise.) Anyway, when all was said and done, my husband strongly encouraged me to actually WATCH a movie. So I did. At my desk. Alone. (Maybe my husband wanted to see our frustration and patience pay off, or maybe he wanted to spare himself being subjected to another obscure Zombie flick like the last one I picked out. Who can say? Either way, I am ready for the day—should it come—when the library has downloadable video.)

At this point, I must take a time out to say that E. M. Forster was surprisingly prescient. I’m not talking about Howard's End or A Passage to India here, but another of Forster's lesser-known works called “The Machine Stops,” which details a future where people live in isolation connected to other people only through technology. A strong opponant of H. G. Wells' style of speculative fiction, Forster intended “The Machine Stops” to serve as an "anti-Wellsian" piece. Ironically, it stands as a rather fascinating counterpoint to Wells' own dystopian visions in The Time Machine and other works. Read Forster's story along with Wells' A Story of the Days to Come for a fascinating and quick glimpse of two ironic and terrifying futures.

Here are my comments on RSS feeds: I set up a bloglines account, and added several accounts. The process was clunky, the bloglines page cluttered and hard to read (or so I felt), and I quickly realized I was never going to want to go there. I then added an RSS feed button on my tool bar. I click on the button when I am on a site I want to subscribe to, and, voila, with one additional click it adds the site to my RSS feeds. To access my feeds, I click on favorites and the RSS icon appears with a list of my subscriptions. Neat.

Straight from the Witch's Cauldron: Victorian Ghost Soup

2007-10-25T16:42:00.000-07:00

Mist mantled mornings. Check. Skittering leaves that flutter and carpet our rain-damp paths. Check. Bare bones of trees (check) that rattle against the silent backdrop of an eerie harvest moon. Check. Freak windstorms, hailstorms, and lightening strikes that rattle the library windows. Check, check, and check. You guessed it, it must be Halloween, and what better time than a fog-shrouded fall evening with the rain tapping a ghostly coda on the darkened pane—what better to time, I say, than to cuddle up on the sofa with a cup of cocoa, a pair of cats (black of course), and a good book.

Since the season demands, I find myself wondering why it is that the words Victorian and ghost story seem to belong together like macaroni belongs with cheese. Maybe we just have Henry James and The Turn of the Screw to thank for this, or maybe repression and catharsis are another natural pairing that naturally manifests as a spectral blue emanation in the back parlor amongst the roll top desks and hand-painted fans. Whatever the case, we can thank Egyptologist author Arthur Phillips for another shall-we-say interesting and worthy entry in the Victorian Ghost genre with his recent novel Angelica.

Set in 1880s London, Angelica details a family’s downward spiral as a mysterious nocturnal spirit begins to haunt their lives, shattering their peace, disrupting their marriage, and possibly even threatening their child’s life. But is the specter real or is it imagined? Told from the point of view of four disparate family members, the story unfolds as a strange tale of denials, half-truths, buried secrets, and hidden motives, strongly in the vein of a Victorian-style Rashomon. In that respect, readers of the author’s other novels (Prague, The Egyptologist) will recognize Phillips’ trademark ambivalence toward his characters, whose self-deceptions form a unique pathos that is hard to resist. Psychologically complex and rich in atmospheric detail, Angelica is a delectible potage of themes and motifs, part psychoanalysis, part Victorian ghost story, part childhood memory—and entirely impossible to put down. So bring on the fuzzy slippers and the mini-marshmallows, Angelica is a perfect Fall read.

Mmmmm deee-licious

2007-10-17T19:10:00.000-07:00

Titillate your tastebuds with reading... and social bookmarking?

Good food and good books shared with good friends—those things form a big part of my life. This week, besides sharing a few good books, I want to share a delicious new way to learn, grow, and share one's interests, whatever they may be. You guessed it, I'm talking about del.icio.us. Del.icio.us is a Web-based social bookmarking site that makes it easy for users to move from site to site while always returning with one click to his or her list of favorites. Not only that, del.icio.us provides new opportunities for readers (or Web surfers) to network with other readers (and surfers) with similar interests.

For example, fans of C. S. Lewis might wish to tag Lewis’s unofficial Web site Into the Wardrobe. Once you’ve tagged the site, you will not only find that 172 other people have tagged the site, you will be able to view other sites those 172 people have tagged that may also be of interest to you. [Disclaimer: naturally, you don’t know those people or how reputable or appropriate for your purposes their favorites may be. You should still always be diligent in checking the reliability of any source, especially any internet source, before singing its praises.]

Now, speaking of C.S. Lewis and all things delicious... Lewis once said that if you wanted to interest children in reading, you should write about things that interest children—things like, for example, food. Perhaps that's why we find so much eating in the world of Narnia—from sumptuous afternoon teas with fauns to fresh fish feasts with Mr. and Mrs. Beaver to turkish delight with, well, let's just say someone who proves in one gesture why children should never accept candy from strangers.

Lewis also offered some pretty delectable fare for the grown-up palate with his classic Garden of Eden allegory, Perelandra, set on the watery world of Venus. Written in the 1940s, the science may be dated, but the story is timeless—and you'll never forget Lewis' description of the Perelandran gourds, that are neither sharp nor sweet, neither savory nor voluptuous.

In any case, if you want to create a world to delight your readers, one where they may immerse themselves as one of the natives, there is no better way than though the cuisine. Here are just a few of my favorite visual and literary feasts that touch on the power of sharing a meal, a recipe, or a culinary custom:

Kitchen, by Banana Yoshimoto
Like Water for Chocolate, by Laura Esquivel
Neveryona, by Samuel R. Delany
Babette’s Feast (movie)

Please share your literary feasts with me, and if you find good sources for more, don’t forget to tag them and then share your tags with me!

More of a dinner-and-a-movie type? Don't forget to check out 000h How I Loved That Movie for plenty of film, food, and fun.

The Blog Ate My Homework

2007-10-16T15:26:00.001-07:00

Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things—trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones.... That's why I'm going to stand by the play world. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia."—C.S. Lewis, The Silver Chair

The blog ate my homework. As a teacher of online classes, I can't tell you how many times I've heard some variation on these very words to account for missing or incomplete assignments. It seems that the mysterious world of cyberspace has replaced Fido as the number one repository for misplaced papers and failures of accountability. So before I move on to the more up-beat portion of my post (not to mention somehow tying it neatly back to C.S. Lewis and/or the application of Web-based tools in the library), let me take a moment to vent. With my students, it (it being the application of cyber-based excuses) usually starts with "I posted it yesterday, I don't know where it went," usually moving through various and creative mumblings about "lost in cyberspace," and generally ending somewhere around the ever-alarming "I forgot to save," or the only-slightly-less-startling, "No, it's not in my Sent folder or my Outbox. But I know I sent it." Okay, I know in technological terms, I was born last week, but do my students think I was born yesterday? (Er, I guess that's a rhetorical question.)

Anyway, lately, I've been charged with my own homework assignment, which is basically to comment on library applications for various Web-based networking tools from Flickr to Facebook and beyond. My initial reaction, at least to the available krl2pt0 articles, was not too distant from that of Underground Dweller, who wrote, among other deeply pithy things, "I can see where the blog stuff could be useful for committee communications, but it also seems like every separate blog and email account just adds to side work and pulls us away from our primary work duties." On the other hand, like Underground Dweller, I am not unwilling to learn these things and see great opportunity for growth and communication with, say, departmental blogs, leadership blogs, or even procedural wikis. (Is an ILL Wiki of interest to anyone? You tell me.) As far as further comment at this time, I will have to say, the blog ate my homework. This is especially apropos as, in a moment of the deepest irony, my entire blog entry disappeared and wouldn't come back even with repeatedly desperate pounding of the Control + Z keys and even though it's been autosaving every 5 minutes since I started. Just so you know, I had to write it over. And the first one was better.

Because of that, I will have to talk about C.S. Lewis next time. For now, I leave you with the epigraph above and Lewis' wonderful words-to-live-by from The Silver Chair. These words have comforted me in some of the darkest places in my life, and—while I don't exactly consider blogging a dark moment—still, I find food for thought in Lewis' rather allegorical musings from the Underland Kingdom in The Silver Chair as we muddle along in our various virtual worlds.

Comfort Books

2007-10-12T18:15:00.000-07:00

I'm a big believer in pet therapy, comfort food, and of course comfort books. But before we go there, take a moment to slide your eyes to the right and feast them on the love-bunny known as Rho. Rho is Megzilla's brother, and a little less precociously brainy than his sister. He is, however, quite a sweetheart, loves to give hugs and kisses. So take a deep breath, gaze long into those melting blue eyes, and feel yourself to be deeply loved. Aahhhh, feels good, doesn't it?

Now that the pet-lovers have all forsaken their computers to go hug their own feline and canine family members, let's get back to the subject of comfort books. You know the ones I mean: the ones that you always come back to, the books that never fail to give solace on the coldest, wettest, worst-ever days, the days when you lock your keys in the car, argue with your spouse, slip in a mud puddle, and have to eat leftover tuna cassarole for lunch when you absolutely loathe tuna cassarole. On days like that, my husband likes to immerse himself in the world of Anne Bishop's Black Jewels Trilogy. I haven't read it yet, but if you have you might want to log in here and let me know what kind of oddball I'm married to, since the reviews all use words like dark, disburbing, and violent, strangely counterpointed with other words like romantic, witty, teasing, and--strangest of all if you knew my husband--matriarchal. Having said that, I'm thinking my husband may be a little like Meggy and there's some freakin' serious stuff going on behind that innocent blue-eyed gaze.

Back to comfort books. One of my favorite comfort reads is Little Women, a choice which no doubt many of you will understand instantly and wholeheartedly. I honestly have never met the person who grew up American, female, and reading who did not love this book. It's a classic for a reason.

Another favorite comfort book is the aforementioned The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. What can I say? It's not enough to know that Vogon poetry is the third worst in the galaxy, Douglas Adams does not scruple to tell you what out there may be worse. If you read this and don't laugh, I am very, very sorry.

Book About Books, Part Deux

2007-10-12T17:01:00.000-07:00

My last entry promised you another book about the power of books, and so I offer you Brock Clarke's darkly humorous, deftly poignant novel, An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England. When habitual bumbler Sam Pulsifer returns from serving a 10-year prison sentence for torching the Emily Dickinson house in Amherst, other famous writers' homes start going up in flames and Sam is the only suspect. Sam's efforts to unravel the mystery lead to a series of comic misadventures that examine the power of literature on our lives. Word of note: If you've ever been in a book group (and even if you haven't), and you don't find Clarke's ruminations on book groups, memoirists, and stoically cynical New England writers funny, well, if you don't find that funny let's just say I'm a little concerned about you. You need to cheer up. Go read the section on Vogon poetry in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Laugh. Please.

If you'd prefer your books about books to be a little less out there, you might enjoy memoirist Julie Powell's Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously. When out-of-work actress and secretarial temp Julie Powell finds her life stuck in a rut, she decides to spice things up by cooking every recipe in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking--over the course of 365 wild and flavorful days. Her culinary adventures lead to a blog, the blog leads to a book contract, and the book contract leads to a hilarious and heartfelt homage to good food and the inspiration that can come from one well-loved and much-thumbed-through tome. So, buck up, bloggers, we may have a purpose after all.

Thanks to all of you who shared with me your favorite books about books. I encourage everyone reading to check out Sara F.'s excellent review of House of Leaves on The Birdhouse, and if you know Martha Bayley, be sure and ask her about The Shadow of the Wind. Until next time...

What to read while you're surviving Web 2.0

2007-10-10T18:01:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I know I said it, but I have no intention of telling you that. Geez, I could feel my ego swelling like an overfull water balloon even as I wrote that. What I can do is comment on a few things I've read and enjoyed while pushing my Sisyphus' stone of blogging up the internet hill. (Just kidding. It's not that bad.) For now, I'd just like to mention a couple fascinating fiction reads, both books about the power of good old-fashioned books--and not just the words on the page (although those are important), but the book-in-the-hand, the sometimes-musty, jacket-bound artifact that may have belonged to someone before you and that may (or may not) have meant the world to that person.

The first is King Dork, by Frank Portman, in which high schooler Tom Henderson finds a copy of the classic Catcher in the Rye in a box of his deceased father's books. As Tom sets out to learn about his father from his father's books, he finds himself enmeshed in a series of mysteries that may help him understand more about his relationship with his father—or maybe they'll just provide the key to attracting hot girls. A wonderfully funny homage to high school, rock and roll, and—somewhat ironically—The Catcher in the Rye, King Dork is heartfelt and sometimes cynical—but always honest.

For the second... well, you'll have to wait for my next post, because I'm bushed and it's dinner time. Better yet, reply to this post with your favorite books about books.

Why Blogzilla? For that matter, why blog?

2007-10-10T15:28:00.000-07:00

If you don't want to know the answer to those questions, stop reading, um... now.

My mom has a cat, a really cute cat. Her name is Meg, but we call her Megzilla. You can see her picture right over there to the left. She's the one making angel eyes at the camera.

Meg is one of those winsome, alluring little cats with big eyes like a hypnotist's spinning plate that draw you in and make you want more. She could be a poster child for Hello Kitty, she's that cute.

But--and here's where the Megzilla part comes in--Meg is a thinker and--dare I say it?--she's precocious. (Right, did I mention, she's a cat?) She is also deeply entrenched in the belief, as any stray fly or other winged insect can attest, that she is a large and ferocious killer jaguar. Furthermore, unlike Hello Kitty, when you look into Meg's pie-like stare, you know she is not just thinking about her upcoming dinner or her most recent nap, she is thinking really Deep Thoughts, such as, "How can I, a six pound cat, move that 10-pound pillow off the couch, up a flight of stairs, through a narrow door, and into the bathtub? Hm, time to apply those principles of physics I picked up on Wikipedia while Mom was sleeping." (You may scoff, but I've seen her do the thing with the pillow. And maybe I'm wrong about the Wikipedia, but I've seen her sit and look at the pillow and plan, then shift her angle, adjust her momentum, give a little leap, and BAM an object four times her size is on the floor and heading up the stairs in her tigerlike grip. Believe me, this is no innocent kittenish accident. By golly, she planned it.)

So where am I going with this? Well, there is a whole world of information out there in that place we fondly call cyberspace, and I am attracted to it, much as I am attracted to figuring out what's going on behind Megzilla's hyptotist's gaze. Granted, sometimes I feel that I am to that world of information what the fly is to Megzilla, but what of it? Like the rest of us, I get to keep peddling my literary allusions, because I love them, and if cyberspace chews them up and spits them out like one of Meggy's flies or, worse, digests them and they come back as big fragrant steaming piles of blogese, then so be it. At least I have entered the 21st century, allusions loosely intact (no bowel pun intended).