|
|
 I disappeared, blogosphere-wise, this past week, and for a very good reason — well, depending on your point of view, a very good reason or not: the season premiere for Lost‘s final season was this week, which involved not just two hours of rapt attention to the screen (phones will not be answered while Lost is on!), but several hours, over subsequent evenings, of discussion. Yes, I’m obsessed. But no one watches five seasons of a nearly-inscrutable mystery without being obsessed at the end of it.
However, there’s a literary tangent to Lost. A surprising number of books are shown, mentioned, or referenced in the course of every season; even in this upcoming and final season, we’re told there’s a book that will play an important part in the sixth episode (obviously don’t click if you don’t want even the smallest spoiler). ABC has a Lost Book Club, but if you want the really definitive list of every book ever remotely connected to the show, check out Lostpedia’s entry on literary works.
(BTW, fellow Lost-aways — Amazon has seasons on sale for $16.99 – $23.99 this week, if you haven’t picked them up already.)
 One of my favorite Friends episodes is the one where Ross discovers that the aisle where his dissertation is shelved, in the university library, is where everyone goes to have sex — presumably because it’s generally deserted. This list from Flavorwire seems like a tailor-made accompaniment: 10 Best Songs About Libraries and Librarians. My favorite quote is from “Swinging London” by The Magnetic Fields: “I read your manifestos and your strange religious tracts/You took me to your library and kissed me in the stacks.”
Here’s the rundown, but click through to the article above for details & song samples.
1. “At the Library” by Green Day
2. “In the Army Kid” by Of Montreal
3. “Swinging London” by The Magnetic Fields
4. “Young Adult Friction” by The Pains of Being Pure at Heart
5. “Lost in the Library” – Saint Etienne
6. “There She Goes, My Beautiful World” by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
7. “Library Card” by Frank Zappa
8. “Fun Fun Fun” by The Beach Boys
9. “Librarian” by My Morning Jacket
10. “Library Rap” by MC Poindexter & The Study Crew
I’ve just finished setting up five new workstations here at the museum, including one here in the library. It’s a bigger job than it sounds because whenever we get new equipment, then there’s a game of “musical computers” to be played, where one person’s now-replaced computer is passed down the staff food chain to whoever is currently using a machine that’s older than that one, and so on. I keep a chart, to know who’s where in the technology scheme of things.
I can’t do much about getting free hardware. Yes, companies will donate their old computers to you, sometimes. We’ve done that in the past. But — look, not to be ungrateful, but if Bank of America figures this desktop is too old for someone to run a few programs on & they’ve replaced it, chances are we can’t really use it to do our cataloging & graphics work here. So we find ourselves needing to scrape together the $$ for the actual machines, and then we’ve got a software problem.
Luckily, a few years ago I learned about TechSoup Stock, a great site for non-profits. There you can get your hands on donated and discounted technology products, generously provided by corporate and nonprofit technology partners, for a very small administration fee. For example, Microsoft Office 2007 Standard, the stand-alone version? $16. It retails for $399. Norton 360 3.0? $8, and it retails at $79. It’s pretty awesome. There’s some rules and regulations, and you really do need to be a 501(c)(3) organization. But worth checking out if you are.
Just today I came across a great blog post that talks about ways to save on technology for libraries: 13 Ways (and 147 Tools) to Help Your Library Save Money on Technology. Lots of great ideas, many of which could be useful for even you sad non-librarians. 
Honestly, with the way costs have risen, and how much Microsoft software companies charge for basic computing necessities, a lot of people are turning to free or open-source solutions. I use an open-source system for our ILS (though I pay to have it hosted) — OPALS, who’s a small player in the library open-source trend, but nice guys — and I’ve been told by more than one IT guy I know that their businesses/schools/governments are thinking abotu ditching MS and going with OpenOffice. I’m all for paying for something you need, if it fills a niche, but there are just too many other solutions for the big stuff these days. It really does pay to be creative and to hunt around, you find a lot of new options.
I have a tattoo. It’s on my back, and it’s that most cheesy and cliched of tattoos, a Chinese symbol. For what it’s worth, though, what that symbol means and represents to me was a very specific and personal choice, as all tattoos should be. As most anyone who’s ever gotten a tattoo will tell you, the experience of getting one tends to make you want to get another. I haven’t yet — haven’t found the right tattoo, the right place for it, the right time. I’ll know when I’m there. But one thing I never really thought of before was words — literature to be exact. From The New Yorker:
Check out Contrariwise, a site devoted to pictures of bookish tattoos. The sources for the tats run the gamut, from Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s “Social Contract” to Michael Crichton’s “Jurassic Park.” Harry Potter-inspired tattoos are popular, as are lines from “The Giving Tree” and “Where the Wild Things Are.” In terms of more grownup reading material, an astonishing number of people have chosen to engrave Kurt Vonnegut’s quip “So it goes” on various body parts. The tattoos mostly consist of just a line or two, but some braver souls have inked on entire passages (at least the guy with the opening of “A Tale of Two Cities” on his inner forearms will never be without reading material while waiting in line at the post office).
I wish there were more pics in the database, but it’s a good start. I like the idea. I’d have to wonder if, no matter how much I liked a certain quote, I’d always want it on my body. Remember signature lines on emails? All the rage for awhile there. But you could change that whenever you wanted. I’ve got a couple of favorite literary quotes, but narrowing it down to just one for the rest of my life would be awfully difficult. The only quote that’s stayed with me my entire adult life is from Douglas Adams: “So long and thanks for all the fish.” I still smirk at it just the same as I did when I first read it, but I’m not sure I want to be that snarky all the time.
If you had to choose one literary quote to tattoo on your body, what would it be?
Review of: Ransom, by David Malouf
Pantheon (2010), Hardcover, 240 pages
Freshman English class, at the performing arts high school I went to, I read both The Iliad and The Odyssey. For a class writing assignment I rewrote the first chapter of the latter in a modern setting, with Odysseus the head of a business conglomerate, gone missing, and Penelope and her son fighting off intrepid board members with corporate takeover in their hearts. My teacher loved it, praising it for years to come, and I always felt a little bit of shame when he did: I’d just plopped Homer’s characters into a Sidney Sheldon-esque plot, something straight out of trashy fiction. I still think what I wrote wasn’t praiseworthy, but I sometimes wish I’d kept going and made a pile of trashy fiction money.
 The Iliad itself remains, to me, one of the best stories ever told. I enjoy The Odyssey but sometimes get annoyed with Odysseus for taking so darn long to get home. Retellings of these tales, in modern language though not modern setting, are naturally a favorite of mine.
Of course, retelling Homer’s stories, and the stories of the gods, demigods and heroes of Greek and Roman mythology in general, is a well-established tradition in Western culture. Whether thinly veiled or directly stated, well-done or horribly so, we seem fascinated with these sagas. Shakespeare wrote Troilus and Cressida. My Fair Lady is a twist on the Pygmalion story. There’s a new version of Clash of the Titans coming out in 2010, minus the stop-motion animation. A few years ago Brad Pitt made an atrociously bad film called Troy, which at least had a lot of handsome half-clad or less men in it. One of my favorite authors, Marion Zimmer Bradley, wrote a book called The Firebrand, about Kassandra and the fall of Troy — it’s quite good, I recommend it. Another of my favorite authors, Margaret Atwood, wrote The Penelopiad, about Penelope’s long wait for the return of her husband — and I don’t really recommend it.
David Malouf is a legendary Australian author, possibly its greatest living author; I think it’s something of a shame that I haven’t read anything of his until now. His latest novel, the first from him in a decade, Ransom, is just the kind of Homer retelling that I love. Taking one event from The Iliad — Priam, King of Troy, offering the Greek Achilles ransom for his son Hector’s body — Malouf evokes the entire war itself, with its dust and blood and disappointments. We see the world through Achilles’ eyes, and Troy through Priam’s, and some of both from the third man in the story, Somax, the carter who accompanies Priam to the Greek camp. Each of these men has something within him, something he needs the other for, some part of himself he needs redeemed. Malouf’s story, while set in a war, is not about physical strife at all but with the strugglings within ourselves: about the choices we make and what we must bear, as a result.
Perhaps surprisingly, given all that, the writing is a fluid pleasure to read. Somax, the carter, certainly brings a less lofty, more human component to the mix. No mighty warrior or great king he, his simpler wants and desires resonate not just with the reader but with his literary companions as well. And despite the grim setting, and the grim topic at hand, even despite the sorrow and despair the old king feels and the ravaging grief Achilles keeps barely restrained, there is a lightness to Malouf’s words, a wryness of a sort. You feel comfortable in his pages, and as the last turned, though I felt completely satisfied with the story told, I was sorry to see our time together end.
I’ve got a monkey on my back: Barnes & Noble.
I read a lot of books these days. A few of them I get from the library, but like a lot of librarians I know, I confess I like owning books more than borrowing them. Some of them get sent to me by publishers to review. But most of them I buy at Barnes & Noble. Once in awhile I’ll shop online, but even then — this afternoon I bought a book from Amazon while I was standing in Barnes & Noble, with my iPhone (the Amazon price was a lot lower).
It’s the whole experience. Going into the store, preferrably when I’ve got plenty of time to spare. Checking out the bestsellers, the tables of paperback fiction, glancing — more out of nostalgia for my teenage genre of choice than anything else — at the science fiction section. Stopping to look at a display. I usually get a coffee and wander through the music department. Deciding what to buy, of course; I can’t remember the last time I left B&N without a couple of new books, to add to the pile next to my bed, even though lord knows my checking account would prefer I did a little more window shopping and a little less take-home.
I’m not alone, either. Everyone else in the store is doing the same thing, alone or with friends, walking around or camped out for hours with their laptops, stacks of books strewn around. And I know it’s all frightfully commercial. I know I’m absolutely buying in to what Tom Hanks’ character was talking about in You’ve Got Mail when he said:
We’ll seduce them with our square footage and our deep armchairs and our amazingly swift checkout lines and our discounts and our cappuccino bar. They hate us in the beginning, but we get them in the end.
Yeah, well. Sometimes a marketing strategy works because it’s true.
You know, my nieces and I did all the Harry Potter midnight release parties, and sometimes when I would tell people about them, they’d roll their eyes. But I’d say to them, people are lined up and camped out for a book. How great is that? And so by the same token, those people in Barnes & Noble with me, even the ones with their lattes and their laptops, they’re there for books. They’re reading. They’re a little bit addicted too.
How great is that?
 Last week, LibraryThing released their very own and first app for the iPhone, Local Books. The app is free. From LibraryThing’s Tim Spalding:
Local Books resembles popular dining apps like LocalEats or UrbanSpoon—but for book lovers. It shows you local bookstores, libraries and bookish events wherever you are or plan to be.
I’ve been using beta versions on my trips for months already; it’s the ideal travel companion. Even if you know your area well, you’re almost certain to find new places. We hope it will be a shot in the arm for physical bookstores and libraries—a new way to see how much bookishness there is around you.
Hmmm. It’s interesting. I don’t know exactly how useful it’s going to be, but I’m all for anything that promotes bookishness.
I downloaded it and have played around a little. It’s a nicely built little app, easy to navigate. And it does work; it picked up my own book club meeting this afternoon, and something else at the public library. Of course the key is — bookstores, and libraries, need to input their events in order for anyone to find them. That’s the sticking point.
 Review of: The Sun Also Rises
by Ernest Hemingway
Scribner (2006), Paperback, 256 pages
When I was a teenager, I spent most of my summers reading. All my friends lived across town, no one had a car, and none of us had money to do much of anything, so I passed the time as best I could with everything from War and Peace to Hemingway to trashy science fiction paperbacks to even trashier Sidney Sheldon. I’d like to say that I found every word fascinating, but that would be a lie. I don’t remember anything about the plot of War and Peace. I didn’t enjoy Hemingway. Mostly, the Sidney Sheldon was what stuck with me, to tell the truth.
I know I read The Sun Also Rises then, though my recollection of it even as I read it now as an adult was hazy at best. I certainly enjoyed it more this time around. Perhaps there are certain tools we need to develop, as readers, to be able to connect with what we are reading. Not necessarily the specific experience; I still haven’t seen the bulls run at Pamploma, but I didn’t need to in order to understand what the bull-fighting meant to Jake Barnes, to Brett Ashley, to the matador in the ring, or to feel the strange ennui of Paris or of the fiesta and the bright sunlit respite of fishing in the Irati River. Life experience, maybe, though I’m not sure I speak for anyone other than myself.
I was drawn in this time, despite myself, into seeing through Jake’s eyes, both the sights and the people around him. It was a gradual thing but mostly came on in the middle section, where Jake and his friend Bill go on the fishing trip together, sandwiched between the bustling cafes and nightclubs of Paris and the never-ending party of their trip to Spain. This was also a momentary break between the dramas revolving around Brett Ashley, the woman Jake loves but cannot claim, as he is left impotent by a war injury. Brett feels like a flawed depiction of a modern woman: she is oversexed and objectified, and yet emasculates the men around her. It is easy to see her that way, but in the end, in context, I think she is more layered than that, and also sadder. In his usual manner, Hemingway spends paragraphs to describe the nameless peasants riding in a bus beside our narrator, but only a handful of words to depict that narrator’s love interest. We see Brett’s actions through Jake’s eyes, but Jake, and the author, does not elaborate, does not explain their meaning to us. That is left to the reader to decipher, and my experience was that it was necessary to do so, to see Brett as more than what she appears on the page.
In his notes for this novel, Hemingway wrote: “Robert Cohn is the hero.” I confess I cannot follow where the author leads in this regard. Of greatest disturbance to most readers is the anti-Semitism directed almost casually at Cohn by even his friends, but that was not what troubled me; I felt it was a case of Hemingway depicting that prejudice in his characters, not expressing intolerance of his own. It is more that, seeing Cohn through Jake’s eyes, and even through Brett’s and their other friends’, I was unable to see anything noble in him, anything admirable, anything heroic.
Hemingway’s novel is not perfect by any means, but it is a near-perfect encapsulation of the Lost Generation’s disillusionment after World War I, their dissatisfaction and search for some sort of peace of the soul, now that they have respite from war. The theme of disillusionment has been echoed in modern fiction and cinema many times, each time the story playing out much the same. As Hemingway chronicled his era, so did J.D. Salinger write of the transition from World War II to the Baby Boomers, The Big Chill looked at the passage from hippie to yuppie, and St. Elmo’s Fire looked at the disenchantment of young professionals in the 80s and 90s. Disparate in style, there is a common thread there, one that clearly resonates with readers and viewers again and again.
 From Salon.com:
Unless you’ve been trapped under a very large P.C. for the last year, you’ve likely heard the about Apple’s rumored new tablet device (now being heralded as the “iSlate”). The device is thought to be an 8 (or 10, or 11) inch flat iPod-like gadget that will be a mix between a Mac laptop and a Kindle. Most rumors suggest that it will have a touch interface and video capabilities, and, thanks to today’s Wall Street Journal, it has a likely release date: March. (According to the article, Apple will show it to the public later this month.)
I haven’t been trapped under a P.C. or a rock (or anything else heavy), and I’ve been waiting for this kind of confirmation, from a reputable outlet, about the Apple tablet — iSlate, I guess — for awhile. (Did you know that Apple bought the domain name iSlate.com back in 2007?) And while I’m hoping they’re aiming high on that price point ($1,000 was mentioned), I admit I’m desirous, indeed. And one of the many reasons is for e-reading. I just can’t make the leap to buy an entire device as an e-reader; even though the Nook is tempting as all get out, it’s not practical for my budget anymore to buy an electronic device that only does one thing. But the “iSlate” would do more, obviously.
And — look, I could talk at some length about what I would use an Apple tablet for — movies, presentations in meetings, travel, e-reading. All valid stuff. But we all know when it comes down to it, it’s mostly going to be SHINY I WANTS IT NOWZZ.
Staying tuned, I guess, until the 26th.
There is always a stack of books on my nightstand. There’s the “in progress” book right next to me, of course, but I mean the pile of books I’ve got on my “to read” list, next to that. The thing about that stack is that its composition changes — of course, as I read along. But more’s always getting added to the pile, and the order changes on a whim as well. Poor Al Gore has been languishing at the bottom of the stack for a year now, but I took him to work to be my “stuck at lunch alone” book buddy, so maybe he’ll get some intermittent attention that way.
The lineup right now:
Loving Frank by Nancy Horan
Chocolat by Joanne Harris
Wife in the North by Judith O’Reilly
Luncheon of the Boating Party by Susan Vreeland
Museum by Danny Danzinger
Some of these are from the museum book club, and of course all of the books on that list will make it to the stack eventually. A few others that caught my eye and may make it there:
City Boy: My Life in New York During the 1960s and ’70s by Edmund White
THE SECOND CITY UNSCRIPTED: Revolution and Revelation at the World-Famous Comedy Theater by Mike Thomas
Lastly, this one isn’t even published yet, but it’s by the fabulous Laura Bennett, Project Runway finalist from season 3.
Didn’t I Feed You Yesterday?: A Mother’s Guide to Sanity in Stilettos by Laura Bennett, available 4/13/2010.
Doesn’t that sound wonderful? And I don’t even have kids.
Anyone else got a book they’re looking forward to?
|
|
Recent Comments