However Precious

File this under scary and depressing.

“When the globe becomes a single electronic web with all its languages and culture recorded on a single tribal drum, the fixed point of view of print culture becomes irrelevant, however precious.” –  Marshall McLuhan

I found the quote in Bob Rodgers’ wonderful essay, “In the Garden with the Guru”, in the January/February 2008 issue of “Literary Review of Canada” –
http://lrc.reviewcanada.ca/index.php?page=In-the-Garden-with-the-Guru

The Shadow Catcher: A Novel

This is a novel that leaves you wanting more. It combines some historical fiction and tells a semi-autobiographical story about the author. Half of the novel talks about the life of photographer Edward Curtis who was famous for photographing American Indians on the west coast. I enjoyed this part of the book as it piqued my interest and I ended up reading more about Curtis. This is a short novel and I would recommend it.

About reviews

Barbara Vey talks about reviews on her blog “Beyond Her Book”.  In the post, “Reading the Book: A Novel Approach to Reviewing”, (http://www.publishersweekly.com/blog/880000288/post/460020646.html), Vey says she doesn’t read reviews because she wants to make up her own mind. 

I love to read reviews, especially since most books have more than one review and usually they don’t agree with each other!  For instance, why did ”Soul Patch” by Reed Farrel Coleman get an Edgar nomination, but a lukewarm review from Publisher’s Weekly?  What’s the scoop?  I guess I’ll have to read it to find out who’s got the better nose for good books - the Edgar nominee committee or the reviewer at Publisher’s Weekly?

Vey’s post also mentions that Harriet Klausner is the number one “lay” reviewer for Amazon.com, posting ”45 reviews a week”.  Vey wonders if it’s possible to read that many per week.  I’ve never noticed Klausner’s reviews, so I don’t know how influential they are.  It would be interesting to see if she’s really reading the books or if she was a major consultant for Pierre Bayard’s “How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read”! 

In his blog “Bokardo”, Joshua Porter explores Klausner in this post: http://bokardo.com/archives/is-harriet-klausner-for-real/.  He has interesting information on her, such as the ratings she gets for her reviews.  It gives you a lot to think about.

Scottish Literature

Yesterday, the Washington Post published Scottish? English? Library Thinks Twice by Mike Wade.  Wade reveals the Library of Congress decided to classify Scottish literature as English literature.  ”After reviewing thoughtful comments…” from the National Library of Scotland and the British Library, LC reversed their decision.  Enjoy the full article here:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/14/AR2008011402485.html?wpisrc=_rssprint/style

100 Alfas of Solitude

From the Washington Post, Thursday, January 10:

Mexican Police Hit the Books With the Help of Radio Codes: Supervisors Hope Literature Will Soften Officers’ Rough Image

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/09/AR2008010903401.html

This Just In!

Two new books in our Adult Nonfiction collection are:

Lean Six Sigma demystified by Jay Arthur

At first I thought it was a book about some kind of exercise program.  It’s actually about a system that will show you how to make your business, “better, faster, cheaper, more productive, and more profitable.”

The other title that caught my eye was, Happy Accidents: Serendipity in Modern Medical Breakthroughs by Morton A. Meyers, M.D.

The book starts with a wonderful dedication, “To my wife, Bea, my greatest serendipitous discovery”.  Meyers talks about how penicillin, chemotherapy drugs, X-rays, and other treatments were discovered accidentally.  He shows that these “accidents” are transformed by the preparation and training of the researchers, who can look at unexpected results and realize what those results imply.

Come on by your favorite branch to enjoy either title!

Dangerous Ideas

In the introduction to “What Is Your Dangerous Idea?”, Steven Pinker says, in part:

Do women, on average, have a different profile of aptitudes and emotions than men? Were the events in the Bible fictitious-not just the miracles, but those involving kings and empires? Has the state of the environment improved in the last fifty years? Do most victims of sexual abuse suffer no lifelong damage? Did Native Americans engage in genocide and despoil the landscape?  …

Perhaps you can feel your blood pressure rise as you read these questions.  Perhaps you are appalled that people can so much as think such things.  Perhaps you think less of me for bringing them up.  These are dangerous ideas-ideas that are denounced not because they are self-evidently false, nor because they advocate harmful action, but because they are thought to corrode the prevailing moral order.

Whew!  With that kind of intro, how can you not read the book!?  It’s a collection of essays by scientists on what they consider to be their most dangerous ideas.  Some of the essays contain ideas that are scary to contemplate, but all are intriguing.

Visit Edge at www.edge.org to see what scientists have to say about this year’s question, “What Have You Changed Your Mind About? Why?“

January Rain

I’m trying to read more adult books in 2008, so I started the year listening to “The Great Fire” by Shirley Hazzard on CD.  I listened to the first 2 discs and gave up.  I can’t figure out what she was trying to do.  One scene in the book describes a party and then the author says something along the lines of, “And that was the scene you’d have seen in 1947,” and then goes right back into the narrative from the characters’ point of view in 1947. 

Here’s the description of the book from our catalog: 

In war-torn Asia and stricken Europe, men and women, still young but veterans of harsh experience, must reinvent their lives and expectations, and learn, from their past, to dream again. Some will fulfill their destinies, others will falter. At the center of the story, a brave and brilliant soldier find that survival and worldly achievement are not enough. His counterpart, a young girl living in occupied Japan and tending her dying brother, falls in love, and in the process discovers herself.

I just couldn’t connect with any of the characters or their concerns.  Another problem with the book is the title.  Everyone thinks it must be about the Great Fire of London.

Oh well.  There’s thousands of books in the library, so I’ll find something!

Chaos at the Library

We got about 20 new non-fiction books today and I wanted to share the caption from Figure 15 in the book “Chaos: A Very Short Introduction” by Leonard Smith:

The probability forecast our 21st-century demon would make for the 1963 Lorenz System.  Contrast the way uncertainty evolves in this chaotic system with the relatively simple growth of uncertainty under the Yule Map shown in Figure 10 on page 52

I thought it sounded like a physics edition of Mad Lib!