I like my historical fiction with a bit of distance. I’ll happily revel in Susan Kay’s Legacy (Elizabeth I) or the wonderful HBO series, Rome, rather than something set within a century of my own time. So Annabel Lyon’s The Golden Mean, a novel of the philosopher Aristotle and Alexander the Great, set in 343 B.C., is right up my alley.

Philip, King of Macedonia, hired Aristotle, a student of Plato, to tutor his two sons: Arrhidaeus and Alexander. Arrhidaeus, who history labels as “limited” and most likely developmentally disabled, is one half of Aristotle’s work: he brings the boy into the world of humans, rather that treating him as a dumb animal, and helps him to develop to his full capacity. But it is Alexander who challenges him, Alexander who is a young genius with a passionate nature — the polar opposite of Aristotle himself, whose brilliance manifests in cold numbness interspersed with fits of emotion and depression. Between these two, Aristotle seeks “the golden mean” he writes of in his Nicomachean Ethics, the perfect balance between passion and reason.

Lyons tells their story fluidly, and without formality — language is rich in description but also in slang and crude vulgarity. While Aristotle’s thoughts and observations are often beautiful, he is just as likely to describe bodily functions, blood and decay in as florid terms.

The novel is, unusually enough, written in first person (and by a female author writing a male narrator, for that matter). A much-slandered writing style, here, however, I believe it was not only successfully done but necessarily so. Aristotle’s detachment, his cold numbness combined with his equally inscrutable bouts of emotion, would make him a poor protagonist, were we not right there with him, in his brain, in his heart, experiencing each moment through him. As a result, Lyons’ Aristotle is far more fully realized than he could have been any other way.

The Golden Mean has been much-praised in Canada, winning the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and turning up as a finalist for a handful of other awards; deservedly so, and I expect it to be a great success here in the States, with a September 2010 release.

“True Prep looks at how the old guard of natural-fiber-loving, dog-worshipping, G&T-soaked preppies adapts to the new order of the Internet, cell phones, rehab, political correctness, reality TV and . . . polar fleece.” (from the publisher)

High school in the 80s wasn’t one big Molly Ringwald movie, but it wasn’t all bad. John Hughes, v-necked sweaters and safety-pinned jeans… Depeche Mode and The Violent Femmes. My secret love of Janet Jackson. My not-secret love of the guy who played Jake in 16 Candles. And, I distinctly remember snickering over The Official Preppy Handbook, back in the day. Sure, it was over the top, and even though I may have decided my preppy name should be “Muffy”, it was about as far from the poor, inner-city lifestyle of my teens as you could get. But a young preppy girl can always dream, yes? That’s why I was tickled mauve to hear about the publication of True Prep: It’s A Whole New Old World, a “sequel” by The Preppy Handbook’s authors, Lisa Birnbach (and if that’s not the most perfect, preppiest name, I don’t know what is) and Chip Kidd.

To put it simply, if you were a fan of the original TOPH, then True Prep isn’t going to disappoint. The same tongue in cheek humor, the same scathing tone, the same consistent self-absorption. There’s a wonderful A to Z section on famous preps and what put them in the “Pantheon” and an equally charming timeline that closes out the book (“What Happened in the Last Thirty Years”). Fashion for preps hasn’t changed much, and neither have the rules about money, good schools, vacations and mating. Birnbach’s follow-up revisits all of our favorite prep tidbits and adds in new ones such as how to handle Daddy’s new wife and where it is socially acceptable to answer a cell phone. Light in tone and meant for pure enjoyment, I suspect True Prep will mostly appeal to those who are old enough (shudder) to remember the first handbook for preppiness.

How to Live Safely’s story is of course told in non-linear fashion (anything else would have been banal) and there is a great deal of wit in the lists, manual excerpts and bullet points presented sporadically to the reader.

Yu’s book is definitely quirky, and it would be easy to say his dry humor is reminiscent of Douglas Adams’, but it would be a mistake to say there is much similarity between this book and The Hitchhiker’s Guide. Less farce and more inward analysis by far. Let’s put it this way: you may find some humorous strangeness within Yu’s pages, but you won’t find the Great Green Arkleseizure or even a spare towel.

There are some wonderful characters: TAMMY, the computer/neurotic pseudo-girlfriend Yu doesn’t appreciate enough until its too late, for one, and Phil, another computer program (though he doesn’t know it). But these are the only “people” we see Yu interacting with for much of the novel. Projecting the isolation our protagonist existed within was effective, and vital to the theme of the story, but that did not negate the wish I had, now and then, that perhaps he’d chat with a fellow repairman sometime, just for a change of pace.

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional (and every time I read that, I wish the author had said Fiction instead) Universe wasn’t exactly a satisfying read, but it was a thought-provoking one.

Photographers working for the U.S. government’s Farm Security Administration (FSA) and later the Office of War Information (OWI) between 1939 and 1944 made approximately 1,600 color photographs that depict life in the United States, including Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. The pictures focus on rural areas and farm labor, as well as aspects of World War II mobilization, including factories, railroads, aviation training, and women working.

To browse the entire collection, visit the Library of Congress web site.

From the LA Times:

According to a survey by the Online Computer Library Center, more people get DVDs from libraries than from Netflix, and more than Blockbuster and Redbox combined…. These days, borrowing movies from the library is a smart way to save money.

Well, that’s true enough. But the LA Times is a little behind the times if they’re just noticing this trend now. My librarian friends in public libraries, and especially the library clerks I know, working in the trenches, will tell you that DVDs have been their biggest business for years. The demand for DVDs in libraries skyrocketed and it keeps every library staff on the run, trying to keep up.

On the one hand, it’s almost not worth commentary. Libraries have long collected more than just books — audiobooks, VHS tapes, readalong books for kids, LPs, cassettes, CDs. So now it’s DVDs, and they’re more popular than the others put together, but it’s still just format.

On the other hand, there’s piracy. I’m sorry, but when a library patron comes in, rents a dozen DVDs, and then returns them the next day and promptly takes out a dozen more — we all know they’re not watching them, back to back, for the ensuing 24 hours straight. They’re copying them, plain and simple. Possibly just for their own personal use, which is still illegal, but less unethical than the other possibility, which is that they’re selling copies of these movies somewhere. No way to say for sure which it is, of course.

Regardless, the next time you’re in the library, try to give the ladies and gentlemen behind the audiovisual/DVD counter (or just your librarian or library clerk, if you’re at a smaller place) a sympathetic smile. They didn’t plan to take over from Blockbuster, and they probably aren’t entirely jazzed about having to do so, but they’re just trying to give the public what they want and need. Which is all libraries ever try to do, no matter how unappreciated they might sometimes be.

From dailypress.com:

WILLIAMSBURG — City Manager Jack Tuttle made an appearance on national television today because of a City Council decision to nix paper agendas in favor of Apple iPads as a money-saving venture.

The city launched itself into the 21^st century in July when the council voted unanimously to forgo printing thousands of pages of agendas and other documents distributed to council members each year. Instead, each of the five council members was issued an iPad at a cost of about $600 apiece.

The measure should save a minimum $2,000 per year on council agendas alone. At today’s City Council meeting, Tuttle said the city saved $471 in printing costs by using the iPads to deliver the meeting’s agenda packets rather than printing them.

I’m on the periphery of record management, believe me; I’m an archivist and a curator, so my work is far more subjective. But I do know that municipalities are drowning in paper, churning out more and more every day, and needing to retain all of it… and the space required, and the practical considerations, are daunting. That printing cost savings may not sound like a bundle, but it adds up… and so does the clutter.

My town used to not only print but *bind* the Town Board minutes, and then have a separate set printed for each and every councilmember and department head. Which added up to a dozen or so of these things, and there are about 50 volumes. Sigh. I am the Lorax, and I speak for the trees that wee slaughtered to make all those ugly tomes.

Thankfully the town stopped producing the things. And no one wants their old copies now, of course, but they’re all scanned in and digitized and let’s be honest, finding anything in the printed copies was like looking for a needle in a haystack anyhow. Now, of COURSE I have a set, at the town museum, and of course I’m keeping it. But how many copies of the 1943 volume do you think I need? One? Or twelve?

Documenting the business of history is important, but I think it’s high time more municipalities tried something like Williamsburg is doing.

From Salon.com:

In November of 2007, Jeff Deck encountered a sign that would change his life. He had just returned from his five-year college reunion at Dartmouth College, embarrassed by his lack of accomplishment in life, when, walking near his apartment in Somerville, Mass., he encountered a sign that had already stopped him in his tracks multiple times: “Private Property: No Tresspassing.” The extra “s” in the sign had, as he puts it, long been “a needle of irritation” — but now something had changed: He felt the urgent need to correct it.

In the days that followed, Deck decided to give his life some purpose (at least for a few months) and, several months later, set off on a road trip around the United States in order to document our country’s many misspellings. He gave himself the mandate of correcting at least one spelling mistake every single day. Together with a rotating cast of friends, he traveled from the Northeast (“bread puding”) to Georgia (“pregnacy test”) to Wisconsin (“Milwuake Furniture”) while documenting each mistake and each correction on his blog — a mission that taught him about the breadth of America’s language problem and its citizens strongly divergent attitudes toward the English language.

I can’t help admiring Deck’s journey and the inherent nerdy perfectionism behind it. Frankly, I wish I’d been able to go along for the ride. Like Anthony Bourdain, he should contact local grammar nerds for tours of their finest offerings.

An unemployed book dealer who paraded as a wealthy playboy was sentenced Monday to eight years in prison for possessing a stolen first edition of Shakespeare’s plays, a rare volume described as a “quintessentially English treasure.”

Last month, a jury cleared Raymond Scott, 53, of stealing the First Folio but found him guilty of handling stolen goods and removing stolen property from Britain.

Scott was arrested after he took the 1623 volume to the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., two years ago and asked to have it authenticated. Experts there alerted police, who say the folio was stolen from a display case at Durham University in northern England in 1998.

Scott claimed he had found the volume in Cuba and denied all charges.

In passing sentence, Judge Richard Lowden said Scott had tried to use the book to “fund an extremely ludicrous playboy lifestyle” and to impress a woman he had met in Cuba.

The new multimedia books use video that is integrated with text, and they are best read — and watched — on an iPad, the tablet device that has created vast possibilities for book publishers.

The start-up company Vook pioneered the concept as a mobile application and for the Web in 2009, but with the iPad, traditional publishers are taking the multimedia book much more seriously.

“It’s a wide-open world,” said Molly Barton, the director of business development for Penguin. “You can show readers the world around the books that they’re reading.”

Simon & Schuster has taken the best-selling “Nixonland,” (click here for a video preview) first published in hardcover in 2008 in a whopping 896 pages, and scattered 27 videos throughout the e-book. One video is a new interview with Mr. Perlstein, conducted by Bob Schieffer, the chief Washington correspondent for CBS News. Most are news clips from events described in the book, including the Nixon-Kennedy debates in 1960 and public reaction to the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (Simon & Schuster is a division of the CBS Corporation.)

Each video clip, embedded in the page, starts to play with a simple tap of the iPad screen. After pausing to watch a video, the user can go back to reading the book.

Ellie Hirschhorn, the chief digital officer for Simon & Schuster, said the intent was to use the video sparingly, at points that seemed natural to the story, so that it wouldn’t overwhelm readers.

“We set out to tell stories in a multimedia way, and to take advantage of the new technical features that allow great stories to be told,” Ms. Hirschhorn said. “It is still a reading experience.”

Grand Central Publishing, part of Hachette, released an “enriched” e-book version of Mr. Baldacci’s latest novel, “Deliver Us From Evil,” in April to coincide with the hardcover release. The e-book producers borrowed from the film industry and included “research photos taken by the author, deleted scenes from the manuscript, an alternate ending and other special features,” Hachette announced in March. Penguin’s edition of Mr. Follett’s “Pillars of the Earth” comes with video clips from an eight-part television series based on the book.