Going West by Maurice Gee

Just beautiful . . .

TGIF - What not to do with a library book

Some of you might be astonished, stunned, flabbergasted, astounded, gob-smacked, speechless, amazed, dumbfounded, incredulous or just plain dismayed by what some people do with their library books. Some may not be astonished, stunned, flabbergasted, etc. that someone has felt the need to make a poster like this one :

The need for most of those instructions beggars belief. I'm pleased to be able to report that the injunction not to "Fight bears with this book" is one that we will be able to leave off the Blue Mountains City Library version of this poster - all our drop bears (koalas) have been to koala training and are fairly tame!

The lost art of reading

There's an article in the LA Times from a few days ago about how the quicker pace of life makes making time out for reading more difficult to find. It's well worth reading in its entirety, but this part I particularly liked:

Reading is an act of contemplation, perhaps the only act in which we allow ourselves to merge with the consciousness of another human being. We possess the books we read, animating the waiting stillness of their language, but they possess us also, filling us with thoughts and observations, asking us to make them part of ourselves.

A nod to the ancestors . . .

This article in The Independent caught my eye because it's about the Orkneys. With such a title it's a shame the book in question is to be scrapped.

Weekend report

Got our computer back on Thursday. They still hadn't looked at it (a week later) when Ian called after work. As he told them, they'd had it longer than we had at that stage. They said they'd get on to it and rang back later to say it was good to go. Seems ok so far but we'll see . . . any more trouble and I'll insist on my money back.

Friday night we went up to Jamie's school to see the musical. Jamie is working as stage crew. The musical they are doing is "Into the Woods" (Wikipedia entry) and it's a 'fractured fairytale'. It involves the Baker and his Wife who, in order to have a baby, need to go into the woods and collect one red cape (from Little Red Riding Hood), one snow white cow (Jack of the Beanstalk's best friend), some hair yellow as corn (from Rapunzel) and a golden slipper (Cinderella's). All the fairytale folk are in it; the Big Bad Wolf and Grandma, Prince Charming and his brother, the Wicked Stepmother and Stepsisters, the Giant.

A friend's son is playing one of the princes ("I'm charming, not sincere"). He's a tall, handsome boy with curly hair and dark eyebrows which he put to good use, hamming it up with the audience. Adam planted his feet on that stage and owned it; he was very funny. He and the other prince, a friend of Jamie's, sang a duet that quite stole the show (unhappily, Jamie said last night Adam was off-key for that song which brought Matt undone too and it was not good). The cow was also hilarious.


(Hope that works, if not go to: YouTube video )

At the end of the show everyone went home happy. The Baker and his Wife had collected everything and were to have their baby and the Princes had found their Princesses, Jack had been reunited with Snowy White the Cow.

Only it wasn't the end of the story. Just the intermission. After the break, the Princes were not so enamoured of their Princesses (Rapunzel was constantly in tears), the other Prince had a crush on the sleeping Snow White only couldn't get near her because of the dwarf guarding her, Charming fancied the Baker's Wife, Little Red Riding Hood's Granny had gone missing (again) and the wife of the giant that Jack had slayed was on the rampage looking for Jack.

It was all good fun and Ishbel has a crush on Adam now I think although her highlight was seeing Jamie each time he rushed across the stage, moving props.

Saturday had Ian and Jamie up at the crack of nothing to be across town for his AFL game. Jamie apparently played well and got a Coach's award : "James Coquhoun played his best game of the season and is this week's deserved recipient of the prestigious "Green Car" award". You can read the full Under 18s match report here. (No idea what the Green Car thing is . . .)

Rob went off up to Katoomba yesterday afternoon to the annual Winter Magic Festival with some friends. He stayed overnight at Leigh's house, Ian and Jamie are just away to fetch him home just now.

They are also taking home Ishbel's friend, Britney, who stayed the night. Only lots of threats (from both sets of parents) got them asleep before 10pm. Ishbel has had a lot of sleepovers, either here or at her various friends' houses lately, I think we may have to have a break for a week or so; she's just not getting enough sleep.

This afternoon I am off up to Katoomba for my book group meeting. We are having a fundraiser quiz for the MS Society in addition to our usual book chat. The fundraiser is called Throw the Book @ MS and all we had to do was register with them and they sent out all the questions. We held the quiz night with my Springwood book group at the beginning of the month and raised over $150. Unfortunately, we had to pay back Catherine $77 of that for wine prizes that she'd bought so next year we'll either not borrow, or make donations of prizes.

That book group we opened up to friends and family. We charged a $5 entry fee then I managed to squeeze extra money from people by charging 50c each time they called out an answer (they had to ping and then wait for me to invite them to answer), charging 50c each time they got a wrong answer and by charging $1 if they wanted to buy an answer or point - they were collecting sweeties - each correct answer, or $1 fee earned a sweetie with the team with the most sweeties being declared the winners. The Katoomba group weren't wanting to open up the meeting but we decided on a $10 entry fee and when I told them how I'd squeezed the extra out of the others they agreed to the extra squeeze so hopefully we'll raise a fair bit more for MS.

I started reading one of those Cyprus books of Shirley's this morning. I hadn't got around to it before because of the reading I need to do for two book groups. I've only read a few chapters but I must say I'm enjoying them. I'm looking forward to getting on to Google Earth this evening and having a look at the villages she talks about. I suspect things are not quite so quiet as 1984 when they first moved back. Harry's pictures are great, but I would have loved some photos of the house they built and some of the village characters. I'll email Shirley later on and tell her I've started reading.

Good Reading Online now available

For several years now, Blue Mountains City Library has subscribed to the wonderful Good Reading magazine, it's one of my favourite reads each month. Now the library has an online subscription : Good Reading Online. It's an Australian magazine with all sorts of booky things including book reviews and lots of Australian and international articles, author profiles, stories on writers' houses, bookshops, short stories, book trivia and more.

The online edition is an exact digital copy of the print magazine with the benefits of access to the archive of past issues plus links to interesting websites and more. You'll also be able to browse and keyword search through all issues. You will find it in the Online Databases section of the library website (down at the bottom of the page) ~ Mum, I'll make you a library card and send your membership details via email.

Weeding

One of my bugbears at work is tatty, out-of-date books not being weeded from the library shelves. Many of my colleagues hate to do away with anything but who wants to read a brown paged, dog-eared something from 1974? When I was in the branches I was quite ruthless and weeded constantly. Now I've found a blog that vindicates my stance.

The Awfullibrarybooks blog is a collection of the worst library holdings. "The items featured here are so old, obsolete, awful or just plain stupid that we are horrified that people might be actually checking these items out and depending on the information. This blog contains actual library holdings. No specific libraries or librarians are named to protect the guilty. Check your shelves, it could be you".

As an EXCELLENT example of their craft, read this entry (the picture is a taster) - it contains a dire warning about what happens when you don't follow a regular weeding program . . .

Life in the fast lane

Trawling through my blog feeds this morning I came across this in the (often hilarious) Bookninja blog :



Another of my favourite blogs is the People Reading blog, the author of which travels around taking photographs of people reading, mostly in San Francisco. (Sadly there haven't been any posts there for several weeks and I am missing it). Anyway, as well as the photo and the title of the book being read, there is usually a little blurb about why they chose that book, their favourite books and authors. Don't know why, but I find the whole thing fascinating.

It all got me to wondering about favourite places to read. My favourite place is in bed, and that's not only because we are still waiting for the man to return the furniture he has been renovating for the past 8 months!

Torturing myself

I'm torturing myself with dreams of being able to visit this Henry VIII: Man and Monarch exhibition at the British Library . . . having to make do with listening to podcasts and watching snippets of video.

I've not long ago read David Starkey's excellent Henry: Virtuous Prince which I blogged about on the library blog. Trying to get our hands on the video for the library.

Diagram Prize shortlist

Time again for one of my favourite prizes, The Diagram Prize, a prize for the oddest title of the year. The award was created by publisher Bruce Robertson in 1978 when the winning title was Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice. Past titles have included Stray Shopping Carts (see picture) and Bomb-proof Your Horse (a must for homes everywhere I should think).

Nominees for the Diagram Prize are selected from submissions sent in by librarians, publishers, and booksellers. Winning titles were initially chosen by a panel of judges but since 1993 readers of The Bookseller have been allowed to vote. Now votes can be cast online and I urge you to take yourself off to thebookseller.com website to enter your vote and then look out for the winner being announced on 27 March. At the time of writing The 2009-2014 World Outlook for 60-milligram Containers of Fromage Frais (with my vote) is out in front.

This year's shortlist includes:
* Baboon Metaphysics
* Curbside Consultation of the Colon
* The Large Sieve and its Applications
* Strip and Knit with Style
* Techniques for Corrosion Monitoring
* The 2009-2014 World Outlook for 60-milligram Containers of Fromage Frais

To my surprise and horror I find that NONE of these books are held by my Library! Where's the Purchase Suggestion form?

Now, with your appetite for more silliness whetted, go take a peek at the list of past winners in Wikipedia's Bookseller/Diagram Prize for Oddest Title of the Year page.

999 Challenge

No, nothing to do with emergencies!


Fancy an extra reading challenge for 2009? Over at the wonderful LibraryThing they are gearing up for the 999 Challenge ~ 9 books in 9 different categories, all read in 2009. There is only one rule and that is you can only have 6 cross over books in your 9 catagories. For an added challenge, try completing your books by 9/9/09! You pick the categories yourself, just post here and let us know how you're doing.

I was alerted to this by colleagues who are gearing up for the challenge. They are going to cheat ever so slightly by starting on their reading now.

Robin has chosen her 9 categories : *Books Made Into Movies *Short Listed and Man-Booker Prize Winners *Word of Mouth *Chic Lit *Classic Reading *Australian Authors *Biographies *1001 Must Reads *Crime Fiction.

Scarlett's lists comprise of : *Embarassing gaps in my reading *Stagnant bookself books *Orange prize winners *Man-Booker prize winners *Books made into movies *1001 must reads *Australian authors *Recommended reads *Crime.

The 999 challenge even has its own blog.

BTW : Have I told you about LibraryThing? It's a wonderful site where you can record all the reading you do and/or all the books you own. You can give them star ratings and write reviews. You can also see the comments and ratings of other people who have read the same books as you. The link above takes you to my LibraryThing page - get your own account. There's my LibraryThing widget way down on the right side, showing random books in my list.

Which rule? 50 or 69?

Ishbel is currently enjoying the audio book version of Alan Bennett's delightful The Uncommon Reader in which HM Queen Elizabeth II discovers the local travelling library at Windsor Castle, gets hooked on books and starts to worry the equerries with her 'odd' behaviour. The first book she chooses is a bit of a slog but HMQ has been brought up to be polite and she always finishes everything she starts, even books.

I never know what to do about a book that's a bit hard going. If it's a book group read, I try to finish even if I hate it because otherwise it's hard to take part in the conversation. Sometimes I continue because I am waiting for something exciting to happen and find myself at the end before it does. Othertimes I stop at page 56 and think, "blow this, I've got better things to do with my time."

If you aren't sure, here are two tools to help you choose:


1. Nancy Pearl's Rule of 50
Nancy Pearl, librarian extraordinaire (she even has an action figure in her image) and author of the Book Lust books and Book Lust website, acknowledges that "time is short and the world of books is immense. If you're fifty years old or younger, give every book about fifty pages before you decide to commit yourself to reading it, or give it up. If you're over fifty, which is when time gets even shorter, subtract your age from 100. The result is the number of pages you should read before deciding." Following this rule, if you are over 100 you have earned the priviledge of being able to judge a book by its cover.

2. John Sutherland's Rule of 69
Sutherland's theory is that you should first of all read page 69. If you like it, then chances are you'll like the rest of it too. Obviously no good for children's picture books.
This theory is explained in full in his book How to read a novel : a user's guide which I have not (yet) read but I stumbled onto the concept in the Guardian newspaper's book blog article on How to find your perfect novel. In this article Charlotte Stretch applies the theory to a number of books - with varying degrees of success.

I'm currently 'slogging' my way through God of Speed by Luke Davies, not quite sure whether to go on or not. I might give both these rules a go, although I am well past pages 50 and 69 . . .

Psychology 101 via the latest Ian Rankin????

Now I have at least one friend who used to think time spent reading was time wasted and some family members may think the same, but if you get people complaining about you having your nose in a book, tell them you're brushing up on your psychology.


Twice today I have come across an article cited in other blogs that give us good reason (should we need it) to forget about the washing up and go and find a nice cosy corner to read in.

Manly Library's excellent blog, Novel Ideas, posts that the 28 June edition of New Scientist magazine (available at BMCC library) contains an article that explores the mental benefits of reading fiction. Researchers found that people who read more fiction may find it easier to discern the thoughts and feelings expressed by people's eyes. And an article, Socially awkward? Hit the books, in the Globe and Mail (which I found on Stephen's Lighthouse, a librarian focussed blog) discusses the New Scientist article stating that "bookworms have exceptionally strong people skills" and "readers of narrative fiction scored higher on tests of empathy and social acumen than those who read non-fiction texts."