LibWorm.com provides a librarian RSS filtering service. Over 1500 RSS librarian sources are combined and output via different filters. This feed contains the latest headlines from journals and sites in the Humor interest group. http://www.libworm.com/rss/librarianqueries.php Fri, 03 Sep 2010 02:52:54 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.2 http://lisnews.org/eat_director039s_brain_zombies_attack_collingswood_public_library “Eat the Director’s Brain”: The Second Annual Collingswood Book Festival 5K Race to Raise Money for the Collingswood Public Library’s Teen Area (Source: LISNews.org) Thu, 02 Sep 2010 14:55:42 +0100 868650 http://www.lisnews.org/eat_director039s_brain_zombies_attack_collingswood_public_library “Eat the Director’s Brain”: The Second Annual Collingswood Book Festival 5K Race to Raise Money for the Collingswood Public Library’s Teen Area (Source: LISNews - Librarian And Information Science News) Thu, 02 Sep 2010 14:55:42 +0100 868591 http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2010/sep/01/billy-liar-tom-courtenay-julie-christie Billy Liar, a story of smalltown frustration, captivated a generation, pre-empted the 60s – and even inspired Oasis. As the stage play returns, Laura Barton asks Tom Courtenay and Julie Christie why it endures'I don't think about Billy Liar very often." Tom Courtenay's voice hovers on the line. We have been discussing his upcoming holiday to the north-east coast, splashing about in the warm shallows of the present-day; at this detour into the past, he pauses, and retreats a little. "If I read it now, it would make me laugh," he concludes lightly, distantly. "But I honestly don't know why it's lasted. Who can say why some things are successful?"It is now 50 years since Keith Waterhouse's novel transferred to the stage, casting in its title role first Albert Finney and later, Courtenay. Published in 1959, Billy Liar has, over those five decades, enjoyed a rich and varied existence, remembered not only as a novel and a play, but also as a film (again starring Courtenay), a musical and a TV series. This Saturday will see it revived once more, in a lavish stage adaptation at the West Yorkshire Playhouse.Crucially, Billy Liar's longevity is not an example of a tale that is told and told again with a dulling faithfulness; rather, the long life of Billy Liar is a story of reincarnation, of each new generation seizing upon the tale afresh and making the story its own. Its influence may be felt in half a century of creative endeavour, in drama and literature and film, and, perhaps most keenly, in popular music: referenced, for instance, in the video for the Oasis single The Importance of Being Idle, and in a song by the Decemberists, and popping up, too, in many of Morrissey's lyrics, including the Smiths' 1984 hit William, It Was Really Nothing.Set in the fictional Yorkshire town of Stradhoughton, Billy Liar tells of a young undertaker's clerk named William "Billy" Fisher. ... Wed, 01 Sep 2010 20:30:12 +0100 868434 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/sep/01/terry-pratchett-alzheimers-assisted-suicide Discworld's creator on his new novel, living with Alzheimer's – and why he should be allowed to decide when to end it allWhen, not very long ago, Terry Pratchett's father was given a year to live, Pratchett père took it, on the whole, philosophically. Father and son had plenty of time to "have those conversations that you have with a dying parent", and to reminisce about his father's time in India during the war. At one point, said Pratchett, in last year's Dimbleby lecture, his father suddenly said, "'I can feel the sun of India on my face,' and his face did light up rather magically, brighter and happier than I had seen it at any time in the previous year. If there had been any justice or even narrative sensibility in the universe, he would have died there and then, shading his eyes from the sun of Karachi."If the universe refused to display narrative sensibility, then Pratchett Jr would: that moment returns early in his new novel, I Shall Wear Midnight, in which a gruff, essentially kindly old man is vouchsafed a vision of youth and sunlight (though, instead of Karachi, the sunbeams glint off a leaping hare) and expires as he describes it. Even Pratchett knows this is a tad too neat, however, so, this being Discworld, his fantasy kingdom on a flat planet sailing through space on the backs of four elephants who in turn stand on a giant turtle, Death makes a lugubrious wisecrack about it: "WASN'T THAT APPROPRIATE?"Pratchett, when he arrives at his idyllic local pub in Wiltshire, turns out to be full of this type of humour – deliberate, slightly coercive, very self-aware. ... Wed, 01 Sep 2010 19:30:09 +0100 868194 http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2010/sep/01/frank-skinner-free-libraries The comedian's anti-intellectual values will not help the fight against those who think that free libraries are dispensableDo you believe in a well-funded, free library service? The comedian Frank Skinner doesn't. Writing in the Times last week, he sneered at old black and white images of cloth-capped workers educating themselves for free. He's a working-class lad himself, he reminded readers, and libraries never did anything for him. These dreary hangouts are just a big joke.I came across his column just after my daughter completed a superb summer reading programme run by Camden Libraries, which was singled out yesterday by the Reading Agency. There is a huge gulf between the reality of libraries using imaginative ideas to get kids reading and the stereotype Skinner's Times column sought to create. Apparently, he is happy to see a world of diminished literacy, full of people whose idea of mental stimulation is to watch him banter on the telly.Skinner rose to fame in an age when ostensibly adult, university-educated males affected to like nothing better than a game of fantasy football and to thumb through Loaded magazine, while artists were recording anthems for the lads. He is an icon to a certain kind of obsessive anti-snobbish and anti-intellectual stream of thought in British modern culture that has passed, in recent decades, for the wave of the democratic future. It's interesting to see him so clearly express the views of the philistine self-made man down the ages, because, as the coalition shows its true Tory soul in cuts no progressive can defend, we should be looking again at our lazy cultural values.The attitude that all cultural forms are equal, where watching a quiz show is as cool as reading a book and the Fourth Plinth is more fun than the National Gallery, will not help the fight against arts cuts. After all, from one point of view, Skinner is right. ... Wed, 01 Sep 2010 09:55:10 +0100 868203 http://liszen.com/trends/story.php?title=Berne_Public_Library_-_Blog_Archive_-_Family_Movie-_Friday_--- The PG-rated comedy, Furry Vengeance will be shown at the library on Friday, September 10 at 7:00 p.m. If the weather cooperates, plan to be outside. (Source: pligg - all) Wed, 01 Sep 2010 07:00:23 +0100 868131 http://liszen.com/trends/story.php?title=Ratios_Librarian_to_student (Source: pligg - all) Wed, 01 Sep 2010 07:00:20 +0100 868134 http://frikitecaris.blogspot.com/2010/09/toda-la-verdad-sobre-iwetel.html Dice un familiar mío al cual ahora mismo no pongo nombre ni cara -que es más o menos una fuente de información parecida a la que deben utilizar los periódicos más serios de tirada local y nacional-, que a medida que pasan los años y vives sólo te vas volviendo más huraño.Somos seres sociales y como tales necesitamos relacionarnos entre nosotros, y a ser posible con gente con la que tengamos cierta afinidad. Y los bibliotecarios/as en esto tampoco somos una excepción.Muchos de nosotros trabajamos o hemos trabajado en bibliotecas unipersonales, o en cuartuchos oscuros indexando artículos de prensa, o rebuscando en historiales médicos. Con este panorama, y por el bien de nuestra salud mental, se creó Iwetel -aunque alguno luego tuviera sus momentos de arrepentimiento-, a pesar de que pueda parecer lo contrario y en la lista se expongan otros motivos.El problema es que la lista, que en un principio debía ser para buscar amigos con los que ir a tomar cervezas, gente con la que compartir nuestros momentos de soledad y esas cosas, al final fué derivando en una auténtica lista de frikis, el gobierno de la tecnocracia.Se empezó a hablar de taxonomías, folksonomías, managements, SEOs, marcadores sociales, AACRs, ISOs,... y la selección natural y Google hicieron el resto. Se prohibieron las bromas entre compañeros (sólo las tirás cómicas en inglés eran bien recibidas), contarse las penas unos a otros y criticar a nuestros superiores. Vamos, que quedó una lista/diccionario donde autopublicitarse.Ya hace años que me he impuesto una cuota anual de consultas que no puede superar las 3. En mis visitas cuatrimestrales compruebo que las cosas siguen igual, aunque en otro formato. Se siguen mentando términos anglosajones por doquier y ni una concesión al buen humor y a la jarana. Lo que ya no se ven són lamentos sobre lo mal que estamos, desconozco si por pura selección natural o por un sano ejercicio de moderación anti lloriqueo. ... Wed, 01 Sep 2010 04:00:00 +0100 868172 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/aug/31/stephen-wall-obituary Literary historian, academic and longstanding editor of Essays in CriticismThe achievements of Stephen Wall, who has died after a lung infection aged 79, were exceptional for their humane generosity. As a literary historian and a critic of the Victorian novel, pre-eminently of Trollope and Dickens; as a reviewer – at once welcoming and discriminating – of new fiction and of theatre; as a director not only of Shakespeare but of Henry Purcell, informed by a love of enduring music; and as the author of a novel rewardingly patient in its nocturnal rhythms and chequered crosscurrents, he exercised an influence always benign and never sentimental. Likewise, as editor for 40 years of the quarterly journal Essays in Criticism, he was gently exacting, attentive to the very wording in a manner that contributors never forgot; and he was an inspiring teacher of English at Oxford University."Of joy in widest commonalty spread" – Wordsworth spoke to Wall as no other poet did, while there was added something for which this poet was not notable: a vivid sense of humour, together with a laconic wit, a sidelong glance endearingly free of anything furtive, a gift for offering advice in a way that made it a pleasure to take it and a mischievous delight that was the opposite of mischief-making. In his happy possession of these qualities, Wall was always keen to acknowledge how much he owed to the character of his friends FW Bateson, founder of Essays in Criticism, and Ian Hamilton, poet, wit, and founder of the Review. And, lifelong and supreme, to the love and the loving kindness of Yvonne, his wife of more than 50 years, and his daughters, Alisoun and Cassandra.Not every obituary should be a tribute, but this one should. For it is necessary to speak here of that which Wall himself judged it his responsibility not to invite attention to: his having been struck down by polio 54 years ago and lived since then from a wheelchair. ... Tue, 31 Aug 2010 16:51:31 +0100 867833 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/31/turkey-museums-art-pamuk-gibbons A quiet war is under way among Turkey's richest families to assemble the best and most expensive art collectionsA tank revs up, its cannon jolting from side to side on Istanbul's equivalent of Oxford Street or Fifth Avenue. Two women in Kurdish headscarves stand before it, drawing their grandchildren to them as a crowd pushes up behind. This is no Turkish Tiananmen, though this street has witnessed a coup, or an attempt at one, every decade since the 1960s. The women are laughing. The tank is inflatable – and plops down like a balloon as quickly as it reared itself up in the window of the city's newest art gallery. Everyone outside Arter on Istiklal Caddesi gets the joke.Turks vote this month on changes to the constitution that will make it difficult for the generals to interfere in politics. Not so long ago this was unthinkable. Turkey has changed radically in the past decade, and nowhere has that change been more marked that in the arts. Years of stagnation and censorship have given way to Orhan Pamuk's Nobel prize for literature and a new wave of highly distinctive film-makers led by Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Fatih Akin and Semih Kaplanoglu winning at Cannes, Berlin and Venice. But the change has been most felt in visual arts.When Istanbul Modern opened on the Karaköy docks five years ago, Europe's biggest city – 17 million and counting – was a cultural desert. This year it is European Capital of Culture and witness to an explosion of private museum building not seen since the days of Andrew Carnegie.It is as if an undeclared war is going on among Turkey's richest families, each intent on assembling the best and most expensive collections of art. Such has been the competition since the Eczacibasi family opened its chequebook for Istanbul Modern that the city now has two- and three-museum families. ... Tue, 31 Aug 2010 13:00:45 +0100 867837 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/aug/31/terms-conditions-not-booker These are the rules. Don't argue1. To nominate a book for the "Not the Booker prize" competition (the "Competition") please submit your nomination in the comments section on the associated blogpost with the word "nomination" included in the comment. Please.2. By nominating a book in the Competition you are accepting this excuse for a set of terms and conditions.3. You are responsible for the cost (if any) of sending your nomination to us – though hopefully that shouldn't break the bank.4. Only one nomination is permitted per person – and if you change your mind about what that nomination should be, we reserve the right to a) miss the post where you change your mind and b) laugh up our sleeves at your indecision.5. All nominations must be received by midnight on 5 September 2010. Nominations received after that date and time will not be considered for the competition, though there will always be a nagging doubt at the back of our minds about what might have been.6. Only publications eligible for the 2010 Man Booker prize are eligible for the Competition. Which is to say, broadly speaking, novels published for the first time in English between 1 October 2009 and 30 September 2010, written by Commonwealth citizens. See a full list of eligibility criteria on the Man Booker prize website.7. The running of the Competition implies in no way any endorsement of or agreement with the eligibility requirements of the Man Booker prize.8. A shortlist of five books will be assembled via a readers' vote. Readers will be invited to cast their vote in the comments field of a blog published on 6 September 2010. All votes must be received by midnight on 6 September 2010. We take no responsibility for the make-up of the Competition shortlist, though we reserve the right to vote ourselves, and to canvas support for nominations the cut of whose jib we happen to like.9. ... Tue, 31 Aug 2010 11:46:21 +0100 867838 http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2010/aug/31/scott-pilgrim-control-gaming-world Edgar Wright's intriguing attempt to align film-making with more fidgety media suggests that the task is hopelessCinema is very much a "sit-back" medium. It insists on entrapping you in a darkened space, force-feeding you a pre-assembled product and monopolising your attention for up to a couple of hours. Once, that would have been no problem. People were happy to sit through hour-long sermons or even stand through three-hour speeches when nothing more amusing was on offer. Then things changed.Empowered by new opportunities, the vulgar herd sought to seize control of their entertainment experience. Comic books, which could be read at the bus stop or under the schoolroom desk, zapped the three-volume novel. Now, people select their own Twitter feeds and compose their own tweets. They organise their own viewing on YouTube, and create much of it, too. Videogaming, perhaps the archetypal sit-up, take-control medium, enables the consumer to become the hero of his or her own narrative.Cinema still has its attractions. At least it offers a refuge from your partner's prattle if you have to go out on a date. Increasingly, however, conversation can be combined with texting or Facebooking, so a beloved's blather is no longer quite so irksome. Understandably, film-makers have begun to fear for the big screen's future. For a while now, they've been looking to more fidgety media to see what they can purloin.Thus, plot and character have increasingly made way for incessant action and frantic cutting; but direct pilfering from competitive territory has also become routine. Comic-book and videogame protagonists have been pressed into the big screen's service. Yet up till now, the essence of the plundered media has not been successfully translated. Conscripted heroes have been teleported into traditional movie formats; the singular environments on which their appeal depended have had to be left behind. Because of this, the benefits of these transfers have been limited. ... Tue, 31 Aug 2010 08:02:09 +0100 867842 http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/aug/29/brett-dean-bliss The conductor died and the country had a crisis. But Bliss, the opera based on Peter Carey's fleeing-the-rat-race novel, survivedBrett Dean is telling me how he felt watching the premiere of his first opera, Bliss, at the Sydney Opera House earlier this year. "I was scared shitless," says the composer, with trademark Aussie bluntness. "I had my elder daughter sitting one side of me, my wife on the other, and they both said I have never held their hands tighter."This is no surprise. Based on Peter Carey's novel, Bliss is the most important single work in 48-year-old Dean's life; the premiere was one of the most eagerly awaited in Australian music, and the opera took a decade to compose.Did Dean at any point loosen his grip on his family's hands, and start to enjoy the performance? "About halfway through the second scene, after Harry's first big aria, where he talks of having seen heaven and hell, I thought, 'Wow, this is actually going to work.' The way the audience were responding was wonderful – laughing at the funny bits, engaging with the characters. The director, Neil Armfield, said at the last rehearsal, 'We've got a show here.' It's certainly not boring."Audiences in Europe don't have to take Dean's word for it: Opera Australia bring the lavish production to the Edinburgh festival this week, and a new staging opens the Hamburg State Opera's season in a fortnight. That's an amazing international pedigree for such a new opera. But this success doesn't faze Dean, who has an unassuming air: with his languid Aussie accent, ginger stubble and floppy T-shirt, he seems to have just blown in from the beach, rather than than come from the composer's studio.But that relaxed appearance belies the dramatic occurences of Dean's musical life, and the tragic events around the composition of Bliss. ... Sun, 29 Aug 2010 21:00:55 +0100 867262 http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/aug/29/teenagers-language-music-world Writing 11 novels for teenagers gives you a special insight on their world, from their use of language to their taste in fashion1Teen rebellions involving clothes dyed black with Dylon, sausages rejected as "meat is murder" or hair backcombed into a landmass don't shock parents now. The most shocking act of rebellion a little caucasian agnostic girl from Penrith could pull is a flash conversion to Islam, before swishing down to Londis wearing full niqab. Inshallah, you are so grounded.2Scores of inner-city kids live their lives on what must feel like a giant Pac-Man grid, being chased by enemies whenever they leave home. As adults we underestimate how stressful this is. I began writing comedy for teens as there's no bigger demographic who need a laugh. A joke about how many Rimmel nail colours one can fit in a thong and still run from Superdrug security guards goes a long way.3The idea that teens today have a looser sense of morals is rubbish. For every 15-year-old smashing up the swings in the park, there's another sat piously at home writing complaints to the BBC about bad language and posting my novel back to the publishers, incensed over the word "fartface" on page 34.4Teens don't want adults speaking their language, but a basic working knowledge goes a million miles when writing for them. Many adults are pompous, lazy sorts who write teen fiction in which the kids speak like mini-Michael Goves and never MSN or BBM as this would involve the author researching it. Words you should know but never use include: Wa'gwan? Tonk. Choong. Brap. Brare. Slippin. Wack. Bruv. Blad. Emosh. Par. Wasteman. Allow it. Buff. Peng. Owned. Merked. Shottin'. Beef. Giving me jokes. Airing. Bedrin. Blates. Totes. Bless. Diss. Boi. Ufff. KMT. Bustin. Chirps. Va-jay-jay. Cotch. Fam. Crunk. Cuzz. Dark. Deep. Endz and, of course, the delightful Clunge. (Need a translation? See below. ... Sun, 29 Aug 2010 19:29:54 +0100 867264 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/aug/29/vs-naipaul-masque-of-africa-review VS Naipaul is often blinkered but he still sees things in Africa that others miss, says Aminatta FornaIn 2001, when the Swedish Academy awarded Sir Vidia Naipaul the Nobel prize in literature, it described him as the heir to Joseph Conrad: "The annalist of the destinies of empires in the moral sense: what they do to human beings… the memory of what others have forgotten, the history of the vanquished." There are plenty who would have begged to disagree, for Naipaul has regularly attracted criticism, from Edward Said among others, for his dismissive remarks on the cultures of his native Trinidad, on Islam, Pakistan and more.The Masque of Africa is his latest – quite likely last – full-length work of non-fiction. It is a quest through the continent for the spirit of African belief, the belief systems that preceded the arrival of Christianity and Islam – which is very much in keeping with the legacy of Joseph Conrad, who is referenced several times in the book. Already this feels cliched and tiresome; one yearns for the day when an author from outside can approach Africa without invoking the "heart of darkness" mythology. In 1975, Chinua Achebe published an essay attacking Conrad's best-known work as racist and already the novelist Robert Harris has described The Masque of Africa as "toxic".Naipaul's journey across the continent takes him from Uganda, where he lived for a short while in the 1960s, to Nigeria, then to Gabon via the Ivory Coast and Ghana, and finally to South Africa. Along the way, he meets and talks to people about their beliefs. His sources are virtually all African rather than aid workers and expats (you'd be surprised how rare this is).Naipaul discourses with teachers, writers, academics, pharmacists, kings, queens and chiefs, businessmen, friends of friends. That there exists an African intellectual class does not escape him. ... Sat, 28 Aug 2010 23:06:08 +0100 866783 http://liszen.com/trends/story.php?title=Calls_Returning (Source: pligg - all) Sat, 28 Aug 2010 07:00:27 +0100 866690 http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2010/aug/28/posy-simmonds-tamara-drewe-interview 'A graphic novel is like a film. There are close-ups and long-shots. You choose the location and the props. You do the make-up and the lighting and you get the characters to act.'A couple of months ago Posy Simmonds found herself ensconced in a French hotel suite for 48 hours being interviewed, almost continuously, by TV and radio stations. She was talking about the film version of her graphic novel Tamara Drewe, which was then about to premiere at Cannes and is now about to open in London. Her French is very good, but she still brushed up on her vocabulary to anticipate a few likely questions. "I thought they'd ask what was my favourite scene and so I prepared two answers: the attempt to get the goats to mate – 'couplement des chèvres' – which in fact didn't make the final cut, and the 'lulling the spouse' scene – 'endormir l'épouse' – which did.""Lulling the spouse" was a tactic devised by the detective novelist and inveterate philanderer Nicholas Hardiman, who, along with his long suffering wife Beth, runs the rural writers' colony at the heart of Tamara Drewe. "Behind it is the idea that to avoid suspicion, you must first arouse it," Simmonds laughs. "So you tell the spouse, rather unconvincingly, that, unexpectedly, you're going to be very late this evening and you'll be at mutual friend X's house. And then you actually are at X's house when the anxious spouse rings up, which rather puts them off checking up on you again for a while."No wonder Simmonds's astute facility in anatomising the foibles of her characters has led Tamara Drewe to be described as The Archers on Viagra. It's a neat line, but in fact her story's literary antecedent is grander than Ambridge. And as her career has progressed her work has become progressively richer and more serious, if no less entertaining, than even the most convincingly sophisticated soap opera. ... Fri, 27 Aug 2010 23:05:36 +0100 866291 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/aug/28/history-jews-muslims-martin-gilbert David J Goldberg finds that a study of Jews under Muslim rule suffers from its broad-brush approachThe feared doyen of Judaic scholars in the US is Professor Jacob Neusner, an abrasive curmudgeon who, to borrow football manager Sir Alex Ferguson's description of an opposition player, could start a fight in an empty room. Wikipedia credits him with the authorship or editorship of 950 books – a stat that has prompted a joke about a student who knocks on his door, asking to see the professor. "You can't," says Neusner's wife. "He's writing a book." "That's alright," replies the student. "I'll wait."In this country Sir Martin Gilbert – urbane, charming, helpful; the official biographer of Winston Churchill and a member of the Iraq inquiry panel – is the polar opposite of Neusner in personality and reputation, but for sheer fecundity he is a potential challenger. He has over 80 books to his name and, one senses, more to come.Neither a brash TV personality nor a young turk revisionist, Gilbert writes broad-brush narrative history of the old-fashioned kind. By now his method is well rehearsed: a balanced overview is produced, based on exhaustive research of all the available material, and then illuminated with individual case stories or a telling quotation. It is a technique that proved popular in his books about the Holocaust, the state of Israel and Churchill. Now he brings it to bear on the history of Jews in Muslim lands.Perhaps that well-oiled modus operandi is why there is a sense Gilbert is going through the motions here. He dedicates In Ishmael's House, somewhat preciously, to the 13 million Jews and 1,300 million Muslims in the world "in the hope that they may renew the mutual tolerance, respect and partnership that marked many periods in their history". ... Fri, 27 Aug 2010 23:05:34 +0100 866293 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/aug/28/candia-mcwilliam-winter-andrew-motion Self-conscious prose hides raw emotion in a memoir of sorrow, pain and love. By Andrew MotionCandia McWilliam began going blind in the spring of 2006 (she was judging the Booker prize at the time, and remains alive to the bleak comedy of the timing). She was soon diagnosed with blepharospasm – a condition that made it first difficult and then impossible for her to open her eyes. The affliction would be terrible for anyone. For McWilliam, whose sense of pleasure, direction, value and reward in life was greatly to do with reading, it was an especially bitter blow. This memoir gives an account of how she coped, laying its narrative of suffering over the story of her life, and leading it eventually towards the present – and a fragile recovery of sight. It is in some parts extremely sad, in some indulgent, in some brilliantly written, in some comically jewelled, in some shrewd, and in some surprisingly naive. Some readers will find it indigestible; others will be persuaded that its less successful elements speak powerfully to its strengths in order to create an unusually revealing self-portrait.McWilliam's prose has always courted – or been the occasion of – controversy. Although her previous three novels and one collection of short stories have described a gradual transition from elaboration to comparative simplicity, her style remains, as it has always been, high. In the early days this meant she was often accused of pretension: Pseuds Corner thought it was Christmas every time she opened her mouth. Here she has taken another stride towards plain speaking, though she still loves to build her sentences on tall arches; she still drops names; she still writes about money as though everyone had buckets of the stuff ("Olly's godfather . . . ... Fri, 27 Aug 2010 23:05:30 +0100 866296 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/aug/28/fay-weldon-kehua-review The new Fay Weldon is rich in anarchic wisdom, says Stevie DaviesFay Weldon's new novel is a warmly exuberant metafiction. It's a story of grannies and great-grannies. A writer's zany journal of the work-in-progress. A tall tale of Maori spirits, female fugitives, marriage, sex, murder and anything else that comes into the writer's head. A saturnalian yarn of gothic haunted houses. The writer's granddaughter wants to know if those Maori spirits, the kehua, are "that rattling sound I can hear down there?" "No," replies her mum, "that's just your granny typing on the keyboard." Early in her career Weldon published the radical feminist Down Among the Women; forty years later this novel might be subtitled Down Among the Old Women Writers.Over the novel, "the kehua hang unseen . . . like fruit bats". I want to counsel you, reader: in all the confusion, stick with the old women. Granny may know best. At 92, Beverley has elaborated an anarchic wisdom of her own. But beneath the comedy we catch serious resonances: a testament of age in its final house, witnessing ancestral damage and the ravages of time, yearning to gather in what has been dispersed. Along with this goes a warning to younger generations: patch up your wrecked houses before it's too late; don't, for pity's sake, try to have it all.Kehua! is governed by the conceit of a host of friendly but addled Maori spirits liminal between life and death. These lost spirits pursue Weldon's lost characters in a plot as wayward as it is semi-intelligible. Everyone is running. Granny, daughter, granddaughter and great-granddaughter Lola are legging it away from the awfulness of family.Beverley brought the kehua to Europe, when she escaped a New Zealand childhood of murder, suicide and abuse; her granddaughter, Scarlet, is on the point of quitting her husband for her lover. It is Granny's job to intervene if she can. And somehow Scarlet is stuck in Beverley's kitchen. ... Fri, 27 Aug 2010 23:05:22 +0100 866303 http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/aug/28/alexei-sayle-family-values The comedian and writer talks about his familyMy family always knew we were different. It was something we revelled in, and it was accepted. We were communists, we were part of this bigger thing. Generally, we were happy with that difference. It made us feel good about ourselves.In many ways, we were ordinary, working-class people, but communism was always there – for instance, in the choices we made about what was seen on television, which was anything by the Unity Theatre, or anything from the Soviet Union. I was allowed to buy British comics, but not American ones. But it wasn't like being Amish.Molly, my mother, is 95 this year. We are friends. It's a complicated relationship, but we're very close. She's difficult, particularly with me – she gets too wound up and invests an awful lot in me. But I love her – she's my mother. She's adored by people – the ones that adore her really think she's wonderful.Was she a good mother? In some ways, yes. She was very good about nutrition, putting money aside for me and making sure I got an education. And I was adored, always told I was special. But there was also the shouting and screaming; it could be unsettling. And sometimes, the fact that she wasn't like anyone made you want to swap her for someone else. When I was a teenager, it used to really shock people when they'd see Molly and me in the pub, telling each other to fuck off.Joe, my father, was very genial, and people loved him. He started to get ill when I was young, and in a way, he's a mystery to me. His life before Molly is mysterious because he was quite old when he met her. Later, it was either Alzheimer's disease or a series of strokes, and it was spread over a long time. Seeing him disintegrate was never discussed, but it was very traumatic, and I do very much regret that I didn't know him. I was very confused – from about 14, I was never in the house because it was too painful. He died in 1983. He used to come to see me in shows. ... Fri, 27 Aug 2010 23:05:19 +0100 866306 http://www.cla-net.org/weblog/2010/08/the_other_side.php by Wayne Disher While libraries have always been a huge part of my life, and they truly define my philosophy and outlook, they are only a part of the total package of who I am. I thought I'd take a brief moment to sort of "fill in the gaps" and give you all an even better picture of what makes Wayne Disher the guy he is...and I'll try not to bore you. Okay, tidbit number one. I LOVE DOGS!!! I have had dogs in my life since I was 4 years old, and I still have dogs today. Well not the same dogs, but you know what I mean. I don't dress my dogs up in silly costumes, but I do carry on fairly lengthy one-sided conversations with them. As of yet,they have not talked back--but I keep hoping! I always adopt my animals from the Humane Society. I'm the President of the Board of Directors of the local Humane Society, and animal welfare is another top priority of mine. Now, before I anger the cat constituents out there, can I also say I love cats? It's true. My current dogs just don't share my love to have cats in the house right now. In addition to my public Library Director job, I am an educator. I am a part- time Faculty member of the San Jose State University School of Library and Information Sciences. I teach both Library Management and Library Collection Development classes. I used to meet students in classrooms, now I meet them "virtually". At first I didn't like the format, but now when I'm online with students from California to Dubai I start thinking it's a pretty cool way to share information and to learn--maybe our organization can take advantage of this too. In the process of all this teaching, I've been lucky enough to have had two books published. They are both from a series called "A Crash Course in....", and they are meant for new librarians --particularly in small and rural settings--who need to learn information about a library topic and they need to learn it quickly. ... Fri, 27 Aug 2010 17:01:55 +0100 867931 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/aug/27/guardian-first-book-award-longlist Ten titles contend for £10,000 award, with subjects covered including everything from the itinerant experience of the Somali community to Churchill's 'black dog'The past vies with the future and poetry with prose on the longlist of the 2010 Guardian first book award, which was announced today. The 10 debut titles in the running for the £10,000 award range from dystopian fiction to popular psychology, and span the globe from Somalia to Finland, Kashmir to Winston Churchill's family home in Kent.War stalks the pages of the best-known novel on the list, Nadifa Mohamed's Black Mamba Boy, which was longlisted for the Orange prize and has already won the 2010 Betty Trask award. Mohamed takes the story of her father, who left Somalia as a boy and settled in the UK after crossing Africa, and transforms it into fiction inflected by the African tradition of praise poetry. Starting as a 10-year-old boy in 1930s Somalia and journeying through Djibouti, Eritrea, Sudan and Egypt to freedom in Britain, Mohamed's main character witnesses key moments in the African experience of the second world war and embodies the itinerant experience of the Somali community.According to the chair of the judges, the Guardian's literary editor Claire Armitstead, Mohamed is just one of a group of young British authors on the longlist who are expanding the territory of the novel."This year's longlist brings together a younger generation of writers who have moved beyond the social realism of Martin Amis and Ian McEwan, and are pushing at the boundaries of realist fiction," she said.Armitstead also cited Rebecca Hunt, whose novel Mr Chartwell imagines the depression that haunts both Winston Churchill and a young woman in 21st-century Battersea as a huge black dog, and Ned Beauman, who explores Nazism, eugenics and entolmology in Boxer, Beetle, as responding to the changes in publishing and wider society with fiction that enlarges the possibilities of the novel. ... Fri, 27 Aug 2010 14:32:15 +0100 866286 http://itinerantlibrarian.blogspot.com/2010/08/draft-signs-that-economy-is-bad-august.html Welcome to another edition of "Signs that the economy is bad" here at The Itinerant Librarian. Sure, anyone can look at the usual indicators such as unemployment, housing markets, etc. The Itinerant Librarian goes out, uses his information systems mastery and his knowledge of information resources to seek out and find those oh-so-subtle clues that the economy is bad. So, sit back and let's have a look at this week's signs that the economy is bad: You know things are bad when you can't even afford your prescriptions,  have to cut pills, or do other stunts just to stay afloat.  According to Consumer Reports blog, "Overall, 27 percent failed to take a drug as prescribed, for example, by not getting a prescription filled (16 percent), taking an expired medication (12 percent), or sharing a prescription with someone else to save money (4 percent)." Oh, and consumers also think that doctors are way too cozy with Big Pharma, but I think that's pretty much a given. (A hat tip to Americablog). Things are so bad that call centers are now returning to the U.S. Remember the days when companies outsourced their call centers to someplace in India? Remember when you could not get someone on the phone who could speak clearly? OK, that may still be happening even with the locals here, but you get the idea. Things are down the crapper when it is cheaper to have your call center here in the U.S. after years of following the mantra of the labor is cheaper overseas. Here is the deal according to the NPR story, "High inflation and double-digit annual raises in some sectors are pushing up the cost of labor in India. At the same time wages in the U.S. are falling and companies are rethinking the trade-offs associated with outsourcing." So do not get too excited. It's not that companies here are suddenly feeling like they have to employ Americans out of some patriotic duty or sense of loyalty to their nation. ... Fri, 27 Aug 2010 04:00:00 +0100 868422 http://philbradley.typepad.com/phil_bradleys_weblog/2010/08/frank-skinner-and-libraries.html Not a phrase that you expect to see very often, is it? For those of you who don't know who he is, he's a third rate comedian who sometimes has a chat show on British television and is probably best known for once helping to write a football song. For those of you who have not read this article, you're probably better off. It starts with a heading and subheading: "Sorry, the demise of the library is well overdue. I love books but I draw the line at old, large-print ones hiding previous borrowers' diseases". No, you didn't read that incorrectly - later on he goes on to talk about catching dysentery, I kind you not.The whole piece is a poorly written, ill thought out but vitriolic attack on libraries, which he admits only having visited about ten times. In his entire life. Consequently his 'opinion' is based on very little of any substance and is worth even less. He's trotting out the usual 'statistic' that's going the rounds at the moment 'One expert says that between six hundred and a thousand local libraries could close in the next twelve months'. I'm already sick of this, and it's a stick that's being used to beat us and has the danger of becoming a self fulfilling prophecy. It's really NOT helpful, at all - especially when used by third rate celebrities who think we can replace the term 'local' with rubbish, so thanks for that Skinner.That The Times is publishing this dross should come as no real surprise, but it's disappointing none the less. As for Skinner - he may not be much of a comedian, but he's certainly a joke. (Source: Phil Bradley) Fri, 27 Aug 2010 04:00:00 +0100 866082 http://joblist.ala.org/modules/jobseeker/controller.cfm?rssjobid=15560 Children's Librarian (Fond du Lac Public Library, Fond du Lac, Wisconsin) Children's Librarian -- Fond du Lac Public Library, Wisconsin Candidates must be creative, motivated, and have a sense of humor. FDLPL is nationally recognized for our programs regarding financial literacy and employment. We wish to achieve excellence in our services to Children by giving them the tools they need to both achieve success in education and to think creatively and  independently. We are dedicated to giving our coworkers the latitude to grow and make the best use of their talents within a highly developed team environment. ... Thu, 26 Aug 2010 22:15:01 +0100 865539 http://www.madisonpubliclibrary.org/madreads/index.php/2010/08/26/wars-of-words/ As long as there have been stories in book form there have been arguments, disagreements, gossip and controversies that erupt.  I’ll admit it, I’m happy about that fact.  What is literary?  What is commercial?  The debates rage on.  Often the war of words erupt over reviews written - note Alain de Botton’s comment (fourth one down) about a review written about his book (which we do own, so not completely dead in the U.S.) - or reviews not written as in the newest instance where two authors are taking the New York Times to task for lavishing so much space on Jonathan Franzen’s new book and none to their own.  That’s the short version. The longer version is an ongoing debate about what gets included in the limited space of the review section of the Gray Lady.  Authors Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Weiner tell it as they see it in this Huffington Post interview.  Weiner starts off with: “I think it’s a very old and deep-seated double standard that holds that when a man writes about family and feelings, it’s literature with a capital L, but when a woman considers the same topics, it’s romance, or a beach book - in short, it’s something unworthy of a serious critic’s attention.” And even when more commercial fiction (or genre fiction) is included she argues: “when genre fiction that men read gets reviewed but genre fiction that women read doesn’t exist on the paper’s review pages? It would be as if the paper’s film critics only reviewed tiny independent fare and refused to see so much as a single frame of a romantic comedy, or if the music critics listened to Grizzly Bear and refused to acknowledge the existence of Katy Perry or Lady Gaga. How seriously would a reader take a critic like that?” I do agree with that. ... Thu, 26 Aug 2010 21:56:38 +0100 865848 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/RandomMusingsFromTheDesert/~3/9XayRcaOZS0/random-librarian-humor.html * There is nothing we can't do, including hypnotizing lobsters. * Bulgari's fall eyewear collection is "fit for a librarian with its tortoiseshell rims and blocky design." Sigh. At least they're "luxurious and stylish" this time around. * "85 Reasons to be Thankful for Librarians."  Check #15. * Visit "Three Turtles and their Pet Librarian" on those days when you really can't figure out what to read next. The turtles will tell you. * Once again it's time to Pimp Your Bookcart! * Last but not least, I can't believe I didn't post these here! Of course by now you've probably seen them (or at least heard of them), but hey, I can't not put 'em up here. Here are Old Spice and New Spice... now look at them. Now back at me. Now back to them. You're on a cart! (Source: Random Musings from the Desert) Thu, 26 Aug 2010 18:42:00 +0100 866133 http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2010/aug/26/authors-public-lending-right-scheme Authors including AS Byatt, David Almond and Ali Smith have signed a petition calling on the government not to cut PLR, which gives authors 6p each time one of their books is borrowed from a public libraryNearly 3,000 authors are calling on the culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, not to cut back on the money they receive when their books are loaned from a library, a "significant" part of income for many struggling writers.Well-known literary names including AS Byatt, Hari Kunzru, Tom Holland, Carol Drinkwater, John Siddique, Marina Warner, David Almond, Victoria Glendinning, Malorie Blackman, Patrick Ness, Sadie Jones, Ali Smith, Geraldine McCaughrean and hundreds of others have put their names to a petition entreating the government not to make the public lending right (PLR) scheme – which gives authors 6p each time one of their books is borrowed from a public library – part of the widespread spending cuts this autumn."While accepting that DCMS [Department for Culture, Media and Sport] has been instructed to reduce its budget, we ask the secretary of state, Jeremy Hunt, to recognise that the £7.5m spent on PLR gives effect to a legal right and is not a subsidy. It provides working writers with a modest income when their books are read by library users free of charge. PLR is particularly important to authors whose books are sold mainly to libraries and to those whose books are no longer in print but are still being used," the authors say. "Most [authors] struggle to make ends meet. PLR provides a significant and much-valued part of authors' incomes ... Any reduction in PLR will have an immediate and detrimental effect on the 'front line' payments to authors."With new signatures being added to the petition every day, it will be delivered to Hunt, and to culture minister Ed Vaizey, at the end of the summer. ... Thu, 26 Aug 2010 14:46:57 +0100 865451 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/aug/26/world-fantasy-awards China Miéville's The City and the City and James Enge's Blood of Ambrose among those shortlisted for best novel prizeIs it crime? Is it science fiction? Is it fantasy? China Miéville's bizarre tale of a murder investigation, The City and the City, has already won both of the UK's top science-fiction prizes, and is now lined up for battle in the fantasy arena.The novel, winner of the Arthur C Clarke and British Science Fiction Association awards, is competing with Blood of Ambrose, a classic sword-and-sorcery fantasy from James Enge, and Kit Whitfield's tale of the uneasy alliance between humans and mermaids, In Great Waters, on the shortlist for this year's World Fantasy awards.Also in contention are Jeff VanderMeer's Finch, which concerns detective's attempt to solve two murders in the rotten city of Ambergris, and Caitlín R Kiernan's The Red Tree, about a writer who discovers a dead man's unpublished manuscript and starts to investigate centuries-old secrets.Enge expressed shock and pleasure at his nomination for a book that he says was "deliberately designed not to be award-bait". "I think the odds are very long indeed against Blood of Ambrose taking the 'best novel' award," he said. "It's an attempt to carry on some old pulpy traditions into the 21st century – sword and sorcery, in fact."Although sword-and-sorcery writers have won the World Fantasy award in the past – Enge pointed to Fritz Leiber and Michael Moorcock – "they didn't win for sword-and-sorcery novels, and they were already legends when they were nominated. I'm not a legend, merely somewhat imaginary, or so it feels this morning," he said.Whitfield, whose acclaimed debut novel, Bareback, subverted the werewolf myth, was "astonished" to be shortlisted for In Great Waters. ... Thu, 26 Aug 2010 13:31:23 +0100 865455 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/aug/26/discworld-convention-terry-pratchett I'm a respectable mathematician – why would I spend four days at Birmingham airport? Because only Terry Pratchett asks the tooth fairy what it wants all those teeth forIt's August in an even-numbered year. That means only one thing: time to head up the road to Birmingham airport. Not to fly, though. To attend the Discworld convention at one of the airport hotels.You may be wondering why a serious and respectable mathematician is planning to spend four days in the company of 800 committed sci-fi fans, who, when not clad in anoraks, are dressed as wizards, witches, trolls and vampires, attending debates such as "Elves: nasty or nice?" and "The great hedgehog race". The answer is that I enjoy spending time in the company of the highly intelligent devotees of Sir Terry Pratchett's brand of humorous fantasy. Which isn't exactly science fiction (or SF or s-f; only mundanes call it "sci-fi" and if you need to know what a mundane is, then you are one already). The fancy dress is a bit of fun, not a lifestyle; if anyone's wearing an anorak it's likely to be me; and I follow the party line on elves. Two years ago the hedgehog race was absolutely gripping, and I'm hoping it will be even better this year ...I do sometimes stop and ask myself: How did I get into this? Well, 13.4 billion years ago when the big bang was no more than a gleam in God's eye ... No, perhaps that will overrun my word length.It's all Jack Cohen's fault, basically.Jack and I share a love of science fiction, and in 1990 he dragged me along to Novacon, the annual Brum group con – sorry, convention of the Birmingham Science Fiction group. And this chap Terry Pratchett was there: not as a speaker, although by then he was already very famous, but revisiting his roots as a fan. Jack knew Terry – Jack knows everybody – and we were introduced, and had lunch. ... Thu, 26 Aug 2010 11:20:02 +0100 865450 http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/aug/26/scott-pilgrim-vs-the-world-review Michael Cera is the star of the graphic novel series in Edgar Wright's witty and stylish big-screen transfer. By Peter BradshawEdgar Wright takes the ache out of "achingly cool" with his entertaining, hyperactive gamer-geek comedy Scott Pilgrim Vs the World, set in freezing cold Toronto and based on the graphic novel series by Bryan Lee O'Malley. Despite riffing on some apparently emotional themes – male romantic status-anxiety is brought interestingly into parallel with Canada's cultural cringe to the United States – Wright insists on nothing more than comedy and the spectacle of pastiche, an entertainment of Seinfeldian inconsequence. The movie has been attacked in some quarters for lack of heart, and for an alleged lack of box office nous in pitching to a demographic that favours illegal downloads over ticket-buying. I can only say that where some see shallowness, I saw a witty interplay of surfaces and style.Our hero is Scott Pilgrim, bassist in the crashingly loud local band Sex Bob-omb and keen player of video games, activities that encompass the sum total of his cultural life. An interest in literature surfaces briefly when he realises that the love of his life has a job making special deliveries for Amazon, and so orders a book – the title of which is irrelevant and unmentioned. Scott is played by Michael Cera, perhaps the most sexually unthreatening male in the history of cinema, with a gentle, moonish face that makes him look like an early-60s Beatle. Scott and his band are not slackers, exactly: Wright shows them industriously rehearsing and worrying about their romantic and musical careers, but they are so utterly unworried about earning a living that they could as well be in college or even high school.Scott has a love life that, though notionally filled with angst, is actually beyond the wildest dreams of most real-life saddos and geeks. ... Thu, 26 Aug 2010 10:52:31 +0100 865462 http://liszen.com/trends/story.php?title=Teams_Building (Source: pligg - all) Thu, 26 Aug 2010 07:00:18 +0100 865008 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/kkJF/~3/jRn6mlS296g/een-iphone-flipperkast.html In The King of Kong vertelde ik al eens hoe verzot ik vroeger was op arcadegames, van die kasten waarop je games als Wonder Boy, Bomb Jack en Super Qix speelde. Ik en mijn maatjes gooiden er vele, vele guldens in. Dat deden we bij de frietboer, in sportkantines en later zelfs in kroegen en discotheken. 'Een level verder komen' was toen net zo interessant als het nu is, maar kostte je heel wat meer. Er waren maar weinig klasgenoten die toen al thuis konden gamen. Ik had een vriendje met een Vic 20, en een met een Atari 2600, dat was het. De verleiding van de Arcadegame was dus groot. Dat gold ook voor flipperkasten. Daar heb ik zo mogelijk nog meer op gespeeld. Toen ik een jaar of tien was had je nog van die machines die je kon manipuleren zonder dat ze op tilt sloegen. Voor een kwartje scoorde je vrij spel na vrij spel. Kicken. Maar goed, het 'opa vertelt-gehalte' wordt nu wel heel hoog. Laat ik afronden met de opmerking dat ik deze nieuwe aardappel prachtig vind. Hang je iPhone erin en je hebt een heuse flipperkast. Ik moet er niet te lang naar kijken. Als ik dat wel doe ga ik voor de bijl. @ (Source: Digitaal Inlichtingenwerk Zeeuwse Bibliotheek) Wed, 25 Aug 2010 20:44:00 +0100 864822 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/ezFR/~3/Ip7D21vKB7k/ I’ve been learning a lot in my new job as a tech support representative so far. It’s kind of funny—before I took this job, I thought I “knew” what tech support was, from my limited exposure to humorous tech support stories, and my work supporting a small web hosting company. But exposure to everyday people with common computer problems has given me a whole new perspective—or at least the start of one. The biggest thing I’m sure of is that I’ve still got a lot left to learn. It’s surprising, though perhaps it shouldn’t be, just how many people have exactly the same problems. A large percentage of calls I take relates to inability to set up wireless routers. These complicated, cantankerous devices, and the convoluted way in which they relate to people’s computers, cause a lot of trouble and misunderstandings, not to mention frustration. Small wonder that some companies can charge as much as $100 simply to have someone come out and set up a home network. There have been some times when even I’ve felt like it might be worth it to pay someone that much. Another frequent stumper is the way Microsoft now bundles a trial version of Microsoft Office with every installation of Windows 7. Except it isn’t really a “trial” version so much as it is a “Schroedinger’s version”—when presented with a product key, it’s the real deal; if not, it’s a trial. It looks exactly the same either way when you start it up; the only difference is that some computers have a card with a serial number bundled with them. ... Wed, 25 Aug 2010 15:15:00 +0100 864768 http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/video/2010/aug/25/edgar-wright-scott-pilgrim Jason Solomons talks to the director of comic book adaptation Scott Pilgrim Vs The World about his journey from UK TV to US success and 'selling out' with cop comedy Hot FuzzJason SolomonsHenry BarnesElliot Smith (Source: Guardian Unlimited Books) Wed, 25 Aug 2010 10:53:46 +0100 865473 http://blog.case.edu/bcg8/2010/08/24/library_fines From Pearls Before Swine (August 23, 2010): (Source: e3 Information Overload, E-Resources for Engineering Education) Wed, 25 Aug 2010 04:00:00 +0100 864774 http://marklindner.info/blog/2010/08/24/12-books-12-months-challenge/ A friend who was unhappy with her previous attempts at book clubs, in-person and virtual, decided a book club where we each read whatever it is we want to read might work better. Thus, 12 Books, 12 Months was born. Here are the rules for the 12 Books, 12 Months Challenge: Pick 12 titles from your To Read Pile.  These should be titles you currently own in whatever format you prefer. Acquisition of other formats or translations is permitted.  So, if you have a paperback but want to read on your Kindle, you can get a Kindle copy.  If you have a library copy but want to buy your own, that’s kosher.  Heck, if you own a copy and want to check another out from the library, I’m not gonna stop you. Post your list in your public space of choice by September 1, 2010.  If you prefer not to post, you can just leave a comment with your list. Read all 12 titles between now and September 5, 2011.  Might as well tack on an extra long weekend at the end for cramming. When you finish a title on your list, post about it in your public space of choice.  If you prefer not to post, you can just leave a comment with your review. Once a month, I’ll post a round-up of the reviews posted from that month so that we all know what everyone else has read. My list: Ronald Gross, Peak Learning I am trying to find some kind of structure (best word I can think of at the moment) to help me get a grip on my own pursuit of lifelong learning and am hoping this might have some ideas that I can (and will) implement. I know goodreads says that I am currently reading this but that was months ago and I will need to start over. I hadn’t got very far anyway. Catherine C. Marshall, Reading and Writing the Electronic Book I am interested in e-books for a variety of reasons and while I love print books I also think e-books can one day provide immense value over and above the mostly “convenience factor” that they now provide. ... Tue, 24 Aug 2010 19:02:30 +0100 866006 http://yourlibrarycsu.blogspot.com/2010/08/need-some-holiday-reading-or-maybe.html Here is a selection of DVDs and fiction books available from the Library:DVDsP.S. I Love You - Hilary Swank, Romantic ComedyGrumpy Old Women: it's just everything - Television ComedyBorat - Sacha Baron Cohen, ComedyRunning With Scissors - Annette Benning, DramaWas it Something I Said? - Billy Connolly, Stand-up ComedyLittle Miss Sunshine - Toni Collette, ComedyCollateral - Tom Cruise, DramaGone Baby Gone - Alan Ladd, DramaBeowulf - Anthony Hopkins, DramaNew Moon - Kristen Stewart, Vampire DramaSweet Home Alabama - Reese Witherspoon, RomanceThe Invasion - Nicole Kidman, Alien DramaThe Bucket List - Jack Nicholson, Comedy-Cancer FilmTransformers - Shia LaBeouf, DramaDoctor Who. Planet of Evil - Television ProgramNorth by Northwest - Cary Grant, Comedy-ThrillerBooks:House Rules - Jodi PicoultJust Take My Heart - Mary Higgins ClarkFriend of the Devil - Peter RobinsonThe Bone Vault - Linda FairsteinThe Constant Gardener - John le CarréRose by any other Name - Maureen McCarthyLife in Seven Mistakes: a novel - Susan JohnsonThe Italian Romance - Joanne CarrollMy Sister’s Keeper - Jodi PicoultThe Tenderness of Wolves - Stef Penney (Source: Your Library@CSU) Tue, 24 Aug 2010 04:00:00 +0100 866442 http://micheladrien.blogspot.com/2010/08/harvard-law-librarian-is-organist-for.html I couldn't resist linking to this article from Harvard Magazine:"In 2003, while auditioning to become the Boston Red Sox organist, Josh Kantor was asked to play Motown, disco, Sinatra, the Beatles, and 'as many different things as you can think of that are 10 seconds or less that might energize a crowd'—all by ear. A savvy musician who plays seven instruments, including harmonica, upright bass, and guitar (he accompanied improv comedy groups at Brandeis, where he earned his B.A. in 1994), Kantor got the gig. But he kept his day job at the Harvard Law Library, where he’s now a reference and interlibrary loan assistant." (Source: Library Boy) Tue, 24 Aug 2010 04:00:00 +0100 864923 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/kkJF/~3/5zPPlGh6t6A/twaggies.html Neem een willekeurige tweet en maak er een tekening van. Zo eenvoudig kan het zijn. Twaggies is/zijn leuk. @ (Source: Digitaal Inlichtingenwerk Zeeuwse Bibliotheek) Mon, 23 Aug 2010 21:02:00 +0100 864827 http://www.librarian.net/stax/3314/obligatory-joke-about-reading-while-in-the-can/ “Travelling Commode in form of Large Book…. an unusual example of the use of the book form to disguise travelling personal furniture, probably for use on the military field.” (Source: librarian.net) Mon, 23 Aug 2010 17:37:37 +0100 867447 http://librarychronicles.blogspot.com/2010_08_01_archive.html#4828492437321623551 I suppose that could be an autobiographical line but, in truth, it's just one of many of my favorite quotes from A Confederacy of Dunces whose 30th anniversary is being celebrated in spectacular fashion by Loyola University this year. The observance began during the summer, when every freshman received a copy of the novel as part of background reading to prepare for the move to New Orleans.On Friday, there will be bus tours to some of the sites in the novel, including the statue of Reilly that stands in front of the Canal Street building that used to house D.H. Holmes department store, marking the spot where Reilly is waiting for his mother as the book begins. Faculty members will lead discussion groups all over the Uptown campus, and the Monroe Library will feature an exhibit of “Dunces” covers representing the 35 languages into which the book has been published. More information about the Loyola program can be found here. As a long time advocate of the idea of a C.O.D. driving tour, I am pleased to see them running with this. The genius of A Confederacy of Dunces is that it does for New Orleans what The Simpsons does for the rest of America. Each is an exploration of the general absurd incompetence of just about everything and everyone. And neither can be fully appreciated unless one sees this essential truth as a sort of reassuring discomfort. New Orleans is a place that magnifies and rewards that sensibility. On any given day one finds oneself saying "goddammit nobody knows what the hell they're doing" only slightly less often than one says, "Oh thank god they don't actually know what they're doing". Dunces is such a singular work of literature for its success in capturing that. By contrast, it's the utter absence of anything like this satirical perspective in a pretentious TV melodrama like Treme that makes it such a miserable failure. Or maybe it just lacks the proper theology and geometry or something. ... Mon, 23 Aug 2010 04:00:00 +0100 866026 http://blog.booklistonline.com/2010/08/20/awards-round-up-4/ Things have really been heating up on the literary awards circuit. Here’s the latest in finalists news: Ladies and Gentlemen, start placing your bets. Right now the odds are in favor of  David Mitchell’s The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet to take the The Man Booker on Oct. 12. Get good look at Mitchell’s long list competitors on the Man Booker Prize website. Finalists  for the Crime Writers’ Association Specsavers Crime Thriller Awards, affectionately knows as the “Daggers,” have been announced. Winners will be revealed Oct. 8th. Last, but certainly not least, three finalists have been named for the Thurber Prize for American Humor: Why Is My Mother Getting a Tattoo, by Jancee Dunn How I Became a Famous Novelist, by Steve Hely Mennonite in a Little Black Dress: A Memoir of Going Home, by Rhoda Janzen And now, on to the winners: R. J. Ellory won a handmade, engraved Theakstons Old Peculier (mini) beer barrel for his novel A Simple Act of Violence on July 22nd at the the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival. Sure there was a £3,000 prize for Crime Novel of the year, but we all know the real reason he’ll have boasting privileges at the pub. Here’s a smattering of winners from the International Thriller Writers Awards: Best Hard Cover Novel The Neighbor, by Lisa Gardner Best Paperback Original Novel The Coldest Mile, by Tom Piccirilli Best First Novel Running from the Devil, by Jamie Freveletti Best Short Story A Stab in the Heart, by Twist Phelan For a complete list of winners and nominees visit the International Thriller Writers website. Ashley Bryan (All Things Bright and Beautiful, 2010) won the 2011 Regina Medal from the Catholic Library Association for a lifetime of achievement. He will receive his medal at a ceremony on April 27th,  2011 in  New Orleans. (Source: Likely Stories) Sat, 21 Aug 2010 00:00:20 +0100 865736 http://kidslit.menashalibrary.org/2010/08/20/cupcake/ Cupcake by Charise Mericle Harper Vanilla Cupcake is born after ingredients are mixed together and he is baked in a toasty warm oven.  He is decorated with plain vanilla frosting and then meets all of the other cupcakes that have been decorated in a much more fancy way.  By the end of the day, he is the only cupcake that remains and hasn’t sold.  He bursts into tears and a candle nearby hears him crying.  Cupcake explains what has happened and the plain green candle understands because he has very fancy siblings of his own.  Then Candle has a great idea and hops off to find exactly the right thing to decorate Cupcake.  They try all sorts of things from pickles to pancakes and even a squirrel!  But nothing is quite right.  Just when readers think that Candle and Cupcake will finally figure it all out, there is a delicious twist that will have everyone laughing out loud. This book is a hoot!  I had worried with its sparkly cover and sweet subject that it might get a bit too syrupy, but just when you think that might happen the humor kicks in and takes the book in a different direction.  Harper’s writing is simple, adding to the humor by its straight-forward tone.  Her art is also simple and graphically strong with its black outlines and pastel colors.  A book that captures the cupcake craze with a sweet tone and plenty of giggles, share this one at any sweet storytime you may be planning.  Appropriate for ages 3-5. Reviewed from library copy. Also reviewed by: Cupcakes Take the Cake Jama Rattigan’s Alphabet Soup Parent Dish (Source: Kids Lit) Fri, 20 Aug 2010 04:00:00 +0100 868351 http://www.madisonpubliclibrary.org/madreads/index.php/2010/08/19/the-plays-the-thing/ Don’t let the beginning of the book scare you away; think of the disorienting first chapters of Eleanor Catton’s precocious debut The Rehearsal as your warm-up, a rehearsal of the techniques you’ll be using as you read this innovative, challenging but totally worth it novel.  After reading the first few pages I wasn’t sure I’d keep going.  The book is completely over the top: the dialogue consists mostly of long, melodramatic paragraphs bordering on monologues that drip with pretension, while the postmodern structure seems deliberately confusing.  However, I kept plugging along, because the sheer novelty of the book kept me interested, and after a few more pages, I was completely hooked.  The Rehearsal tells a familiar story in an utterly new way, and it’s one of the most brilliant, wickedly funny books I’ve read in ages. The central event in the novel is the discovery of an affair between a teacher and a student.  Mr. Saladin, a young teacher at a private school for girls, has been having a relationship with Victoria, a saxophone player in his jazz band.  Predictably, the school is in an uproar, and Victoria’s family will never be the same.  Her younger sister, Isolde, feels betrayed and oddly distant from her sister, who has an entire life she never knew about.  At the same time, Stanley, a recently admitted student at a prestigious acting school referred to simply as the Institute, becomes enmeshed in the situation from afar, as he and his classmates use this local scandal as fodder for an experimental performance.  When the two sides of the story inevitably come together, both Isolde’s and Stanley’s lives become even more complicated. ... Thu, 19 Aug 2010 15:34:47 +0100 864815 http://www.libraryman.com/blog/2010/08/18/irreverent-library-badge-ribbons/ Attendees at WLA/PNLA last week were treated to a variety of unusual ribbons at the registration desk including: “My Ribbon Is Better Than Than Yours”, “Know It All”, “Politically Correct”, “I READ YOUR EMAIL”, “OCD”, “Been There, Done That” and “Worker Bee” among others. Too funny! (Source: Libraryman) Thu, 19 Aug 2010 02:15:18 +0100 866003 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Blogjunction/~3/iSX8AwjsAwA/ While headed over the border from Washington, headed to Victoria Canada last week (which is on an island btw) to attend the joint WLA/PNLA 2010 conference, most everyone I talked to was struck with the loveliness of it all. Sure, the logistics were a bit of a challenge to some extent. Also, everyone was keenly aware of and felt grateful and fortunate for being able to attend during these tough economic times.  It all actually helped us appreciate being able to go more, and made us all extra eager to share what we saw and learned. (What a view on the commute from Seattle to Victoria on the Clipper. Wow!) Before I mention the competency learning goodness Betha and I got to be a part of, check out the wide variety of *ahem* unusual ribbons at the registration desk. Hanging a “My Ribbon Is Better Than Than Yours”, “Know It All”, “Politically Correct”, “I READ YOUR EMAIL”, “OCD”, “Been There, Done That” or “Worker Bee” on your name badge added some fun to the proceedings right off the bat. Too funny!  Unexpected little things always add up to a rich conference experience, plus they are mostly just plain funny, so it seemed like the thing to share. Aside from all that, the real highlight for me at WLA/PNLA was being able to present to a live audience about Library Competencies with our very own Betha Gutsche (shown in that session presenting below). Our Friday session was a great back and forth with lots of practical info for attendees. The description is below, but in addition to what that tells you about the session, each attendee got a copy of the Competency Index and had a chance for some constructive back and forth. ... Thu, 19 Aug 2010 00:01:22 +0100 867279 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/infoisland/~3/AvbmLXHPhyY/ Community Virtual Library August 25th – CVL Book Fair Publishing Discussion http://slurl.com/secondlife/Info%20Island%20International/205/50/33 Esther Grassian (SL: Alexandria Knight) and Diane Nahl (SL: Adra Letov) on professional publishing for librarians and educators. August 26th – Community Virtual Library’s Coexist Discussion 6 PM SLT http://slurl.com/secondlife/Info%20Island/160/167/33 To vent or not to vent? What is healthier? To vent, rant, rave and get it out of your system? Or to look on the bright side, give second and third chances, and keep smiling? CVL Book Fair Exhibits: The Book Path Info Island http://slurl.com/secondlife/Info%20Island/110/105/33 Throughout Info Island on the paths that interlace the sim you will find “book linkers” (objects made to look like books that link you to complete text versions of the book on the Internet) on the paths. Right click on a book that interests you and click on “Buy.” You can buy as many books as you like for Zero Lindens. You can also modify (reshape) the books you buy to make them smaller (more like a book). Each book is one prim and all have been decorated nicely by volunteers A Look at the Book Info Island http://slurl.com/secondlife/Info%20Island/68/91/33 Displays on selected topics in the history of the book Sacred Texts Peace Park, Info Island http://slurl.com/secondlife/Info%20Island/147/166/33 Find the sacred texts linked to books placed around Peace Park, CVL’s religious resource area. These books will link you to the sacred texts of many world religions: Judaism, Confucianism, Christian, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Taosim, and more The Flying Book Tour Imagination Island http://slurl.com/secondlife/Imagination%20Island/118/180/25 (op aboard the Flying Book on Imagination Island and take a tour up in the clouds learning about some classic children’s books and authors. ... Wed, 18 Aug 2010 23:41:18 +0100 867258 http://lovetheliberry.blogspot.com/2010/08/humor-in-am.html Man about 60-- There's 2 tables I need to reserve from 10-2 every day. So I want you to put my name on them.Me-- (looking puzzled)Man-- Haha, just kidding! I wanted to give you a little humor to start your morning.-----Gee, thanks. (Source: Love the Liberry) Tue, 17 Aug 2010 04:00:00 +0100 867581 http://www.libology.com/blog/2010/08/16/wikipedia-lamest-edit-wars.html From the folks at Open Source Living comes a link to a Wikipedia page about… Wikipedia pages.  Specifically the Lamest Edit Wars on Wikipedia pages.  The list contains some thought-provoking debates, and some truly trivial arguments. Some highlights of debates that became a big deal in Wikipedia lore: Compact Disc or Compact disc? J.K. Rowling.  Rhymes with “rolling” or “howling”.  Apparently it doesn’t matter how she pronounces it. Color/Flavor vs. Colour/Flavour… etc. Star Wars:  Is the Death Star 120km or 160km in diameter?  Darth Vader and Anakin Skywalker – one character or two?  Which came first, Episode IV or Episode I? Daylight Saving Time or Daylight Savings Time? Was Fred G. Sanford an “irascible curmudgeon” or merely “irritable”? Discuss…. (Source: LibrarySupportStaff.Org) Mon, 16 Aug 2010 18:13:29 +0100 867178 http://www.kmworld.com/Articles/White-Paper/Article/The-Gamble-Risk-Vs.-Governance-69328.aspx And I quote: "Regulatory compliance is what you have to do. Information governance is what you should do. And risk avoidance is what you achieve when you do both of those correctly." That's roughly what I wrote about a year ago, and it's still pretty much true today. But a few things have changed in the records and risk-management business since then, so I set out to discover what those elements were. To do so, I spoke at length with Miguel Rodriguez. Miguel is the senior product manager for ASG Software Solutions, and is as gentlemanly and poised as they come. He's also got a sense of humor about his work, and we had a great talk a couple weeks back. "For most business-side people, their contact with the reality of technology is limited. . . . (Source: KMWorld RSS Feeds : Research Center: Records Management, Regulatory Compliance) Mon, 16 Aug 2010 12:00:00 +0100 867418 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seealso/~3/eWegI7ecEcU/see_also_is_closed.html We are coming up on the fifth anniversary of the start of See Also. Which seems like a good time to shut things down around here. I’m happy that See Also has been part of the whole wave of library blogs, but like all waves, I think this one has crashed. I don’t have much to say here (the last substantive post was in April) and I think that most people share my wearyness when it comes to reading library blogs, too (only one person read my last post closely enough to get the joke). So for now, all the content will stay up and I’ll just turn off the comments. If I feel the need to share something, I’ll probably do it on the Library Society of the World blog. If I really feel the itch to start blogging again after six months or so, I guess I’ll start a new blog. Because this one is done. (Source: See Also... a library weblog by Steve Lawson) Fri, 13 Aug 2010 20:04:55 +0100 866097 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/eclecticlibrarian/~3/PMx45JIHIAE/ First, some definitions: triskaidekaphobia n. fear or a phobia concerning the number 13. [source] friggatriskaidekaphobia n. morbid, irrational fear of Friday the 13th. [source] friggatriskaidekaphobiarelatusphobia n. a strong aversion to endless news reporting about friggatriskaidekaphobia on Friday the 13th. [source] Yes, I made up that one. From CBS to the Huffington Post to National Geographic, it seems that everyone in the news reporting world must drag out the same old tired stories about people that have an irrational fear of the number 13 and how Friday the 13th is an even more fearful day than Friday the 7th or Tuesday the 13th. Personally, I wish they’d just shut up about it already. Friday the 13th is going to occur anywhere from once to three times a year. It’s frequent enough that it’s no longer news, so stop pretending that it is. Tell me something important that’s happening in the world today, rather than wasting my time and yours. Article first published as Friggatriskaidekaphobiarelatusphobia, Or “Not Another Friday the 13th Story!” on Blogcritics. Like Unlike Technorati Tags: Friday the 13th, friggatriskaidekaphobia, friggatriskaidekaphobiarelatusphobia, triskaidekaphobia (Source: eclectic librarian) Fri, 13 Aug 2010 17:46:02 +0100 867333 http://vancouverlawlib.blogspot.com/2010/08/why-no-one-likes-to-explain-propagation.html We (Stem) signed up with a new hosting company today, Fused Network. Well, kinda new since Slaw has also hosted there in recent years. Needless to say, I wouldn't have signed on for the second account without a great experience on the first. That said, what I'm appreciating at the moment is the humour embedded into the sign-on experience. This is a quote from their welcome email:"Please keep in mind that your domain name will not be visible on the internet for between 24 and 72 hours due to DNS (Generally they're up within 15 minutes though). This process is called Propagation."Any time you start up with a new web host, or make a change to domain name settings, the companies involved need to pre-explain the answer to the next logical question: "how long until my website works?".Unfortunately, it's a question that has no answer. It's pure guesswork. I have seen propagation happen in 30 seconds - literally re-setting name servers, hit refresh, boom it's up. I've also seen it happen in 24 hours (more for country-code domains like .ca's), 4-6 hours, and the more common time frame offered by Fused, under 15 minutes.Perhaps I'm the only one, but I get the giggles when someone tries to explain propagation to me. I love the '24 to 48 hours' part; or even better, Fused's ultra-safe "24 and 72 hours". 72 hours! wow, that's long .... yes... but... it could also take 30 seconds. :)Somewhere between safe and sorry, the answer should be 'we have no clue'. It's too bad no one likes that answer. Even when it's the truth. (Source: Vancouver Law Librarian Blog) Fri, 13 Aug 2010 04:00:00 +0100 866977 http://philbradley.typepad.com/phil_bradleys_weblog/2010/08/blekko-to-slash-the-web.html I've been playing around with a new tool/resource called Blekko which is currently in a closed beta. They seem quite friendly though, so it's worth asking for access (via Twitter seems the best approach). It took me a while to understand what they were actually offering, but it's essentially a slightly different type of customised search engine. You simply chose the sites that you want to include in your universe, create a slashtag and off you go. The social element is to allow others to use your tags if you wish. There are lots of tags already available, so results for say global warming /conservative and global warming /liberal will give very different results; no surprise as they use different data sets. It's really not a new concept - we've had custom search engines around for years now, with people such as Rollyo and Google custom search. This is another twist on the same concept, the main difference being that the different custom searches are available for anyone to use. However, it's a pain to try and find them, and then to check to see which sites are in/excluded from the searches. They can't be embedded anywhere else though, which is unfortunate, but this is still only in beta testing, so that may appear later.There are some useful slashtags, such as /humor or /blogs but overall I'm struggling to find a reason why I'd want to use a service like this, when I can do all of this and more with the previously mentioned custom search engines. It would be a great addon for an existing search engine to provide, and this is problem with Blekko - it's a fantastic feature, but it's not a compelling search resource in its own right. (Source: Phil Bradley) Thu, 12 Aug 2010 04:00:00 +0100 865766 http://santafelibrary.blogspot.com/2010/08/santa-fe-scavenger-hunt.html I love cracking open the Santa Fe Reporter on Wednesdays and heading to the Outtakes section. In addition to making sure that I'm not quoted in the Eavesdropper, I like the Meme, the place where a picture truly is worth a thousand words. It's neat when I recognize the object in the photograph, and it's also neat when I then have a week to locate the object of visual humor / derision / irony.This week, on page 10 of the Reporter, we're honored to be featured in one of those somewhat embarassing tableaux. The meme resides on the second floor of the Main Library. Since we see it every day, we've long meditated on its overall Kafkaesque uselessness. However, it never occured to us to share it with the wider world.If you also participate in this kind of scavenger hunt, my apologies for ruining your weekly Meme. And to whomever noticed its ridiculousness enough to snap a photo of it, thank you! (Source: ICARUS... the Santa Fe Public Library Blog) Thu, 12 Aug 2010 04:00:00 +0100 864785 http://blog.ocls.info/SouthWest/2010/08/southwest_book_club_meets_augu_4.html The Southwest Book Club will meet on Tuesday, August 17, 2010 at 7:00 p.m. at the Southwest Library to discuss the Zachary Chasteen mystery series by Florida author, Bob Morris. A mixture of mystery and humor, his books can be described as seriocomic thrillers which take place in Florida and the Caribbean. Though a series, each novel can be read as a stand-alone. Anyone age 18 or older is welcome to attend. The book club meets monthly at the Southwest Branch Library. For more information, please call 407.835.7323 or email southwest@ocls.info Copies of this book may be reserved for home delivery or location pick-up at http://www.ocls.info For more information, please call 407.835.7323 or email southwest@ocls.info Discussion Questions If you are unable to attend the meeting or you would like to join our discussion, you can share your thoughts or respond to the discussion questions below. Simply click "Comments" located at the bottom of this post. Join the discussion! 1. Overall, how did you experience the book while reading it? Were you immediately drawn into the story or did it take a while? Did the book intrigue, amuse, disturb, alienate or irritate you? 2. Did you find the characters convincing or believable? Fully developed as complex human beings? 3. Was the plot well-developed? Believable? 4. Discuss the mystery aspect of the plotline. How effective is the author's use of plot twists and red herrings? Were you able to predict certain things before they happened or did the author keep you guessing until the end of the story? 5. If you read other books in the Zachary Chasteen series, how does this book stack up against others in the series? Questions obtained from http://litlovers.com/questions_f.htm and http://readinggroupguides.com/no_guide/guide_mystery_thriller.asp (Source: SouthWest) Tue, 10 Aug 2010 23:39:46 +0100 867947 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/lansinglibraryteen/podcast/~3/-BsW7yomcsc/and-survivors-are.html You read and voted all summer long and now there are only three books remaining in the Book Survivor Program. If you haven't read these three books yet, be sure to pick them up. You and your fellow teens voted them the most popular books of the summer!#1 - Airhead by Meg CabotSixteen-year-old Emerson Watts, an advanced placement student with a disdain for fashion, is the recipient of a "whole body transplant" and finds herself transformed into one of the world's most famous teen supermodels.#2 - Hidden Talents by David LubarWhen thirteen-year-old Martin arrives at an alternative school for misfits and problem students, he falls in with a group of boys with psychic powers and discovers something surprising about himself.#3 - The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny HanBelly spends the summer she turns sixteen at the beach just like every other summer of her life, but this time things are different as she finds herself falling for a boy she has known since childhood. (Source: Lansing Library Teen Dept. Podcast) Tue, 10 Aug 2010 19:28:41 +0100 867826 http://marincountyfreelibrary.blogspot.com/2010_08_01_archive.html#7444742851382480703 Courtney's style and humor combined with audience participation is lots of fun!Come join us for a magical evening!For ages 4 and up.When: Thursday August 12, 6 pmWhere: South Novato LibraryFor more information, call 415-506-3165.Sponsored by the Friends of the Marin County Free Library (Source: Marin County Free Library Blog) Tue, 10 Aug 2010 04:00:00 +0100 868014 http://zydecofish.blogspot.com/2010/08/reads-pseudo-reviews-of-some-of-books-i.html ReadsPseudo-reviews of some of the books I have read recently...The Zero by Jess Walter - This is the second Walter book I have read (the other being Citizen Vince).  IMHO, The Zero is better.  This book also happens to be the third 9/11 book I have read.  I'd rank Ken Kalfus's A Disorder Peculiar to the Country higher than The Zero, but I'd place The Zero ahead of DeLillo's Falling Man, a novel I did not really like, though I admit it has moments of genius.  The Zero is a kind of thriller, I suppose, and a sort of dark comedy with some noir thrown in.  It'sa good summer read.The Grifters by Jim Thomspon - Essential Jim Thompson.The Elementary Particles by Michel Houellebecq - I loved Platform very much. This book?: not so much.  Despite the graphic sex that should appeal to me, the book reads like a too-long essay on the social history of France told by way of biographies of two half brothers.  The trouble is that the novel is unbelievably boring. A Partisan's Daughter by Louis De Bernieres - I am a huge fan of this writer, but I hated this book.  Choke by Chuck Palahniuk - I really wanted to like this book, but I didn't.  I mean, it's OK, and it's certainly not terrible.  If you removed the sex parts, though, you would be left with an unreadable book.  I'd really hate to use the word stupid to describe this book, but I might have to.The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall - I imagine that if the publisher packaged this book as a mass market paperback and placed it at the checkout at supermarkets, it would sell quite a few copies.  I fail to understand why this book is being referred to as literary.  I just don't see that.  It's a quirky sort of book that is not challenging to read.  Literary it is not.  It might pass for good.  It's not brilliant.Ratner's Star by Don DeLillo - I'm a big fan of DeLillo. ... Tue, 10 Aug 2010 04:00:00 +0100 865894 http://www.libology.com/blog/2010/08/06/chickens-in-the-library.html So, what would you do if live chickens were released in your library?  Is this covered in your organization’s disaster plan? If you need to examine another library’s response, review this Shelf Check comic for the following procedure: Alert the employee at the desk. Desk employee:  ask follow up questions to determine the nature of the emergency. Examine the available evidence to properly classify the problem. Keep your sense of humor about you at all times. Explore external sources of assistance. Go with the flow, because we all have “other duties as assigned”. (and be sure to read the information provided beneath the comic…) (Source: LibrarySupportStaff.Org) Fri, 06 Aug 2010 18:31:43 +0100 867182 http://liszen.com/trends/story.php?title=Shoes_Wearing_sensible (Source: pligg - all) Thu, 05 Aug 2010 07:00:24 +0100 864714 http://engagedpatrons.org/Blogs.cfm?SiteID=4725&BlogID=61&BlogPostID=7336 This graphic novel is a sequel to Rapunzel's Revenge. Jack, from the familiar "Jack and the Beanstalk" fairytale, stars in this story starting with the tiny bean that begins all his misfortunes. Set in a much more current time and place, Jack's intentions are always to help his mother and to make her proud. Unfortunately, Jack is laden with bad luck, and being somewhat of a rebel-rouser, must escape from a band of angry giants to the American west where he meets up and becomes quickly enamored with Rapunzel (Rapunzel's Revenge happens at this point). It seems her braids come in very handy in what turns into an action-packed adventure where Jack attempts to redeem himself and save his mother back in his home city of Shyport. The large format with expressive, vibrant artwork will appeal to fans of the format in grades 4-8. Fractured fairy tale lovers will also appreciate the humor and witty dialogue. (Source: Children's Books from Wright Memorial Public Library) Thu, 05 Aug 2010 00:20:02 +0100 864606 http://engagedpatrons.org/Blogs.cfm?SiteID=4725&BlogID=41&BlogPostID=7364 Blake, 15, loves photography, his girlfriend Shannon, and in a different way, he loves his friend Marissa. Shannon is his first romantic relationship, and Blake can hardly believe that this delicious girl wants to date him. Marissa is his photography buddy, but up until Blake takes a picture of a sleeping homeless woman, he doesn’t know much about Marissa’s personal life. The picture shows Marissa’s meth-addicted mother, and plunges him into her sobering family situation. Blake wants to help Marissa, but keeping Shannon, too, proves difficult. Blake’s life is backlit by his home life, with kind and wise parents who “deal in death”—his mother is a hospital chaplain, his father a medical examiner—and an older brother who consistently gives him a hard time. Effortlessly, Madigan balances the serious subject matter with quirky humor. She’s a skillful writer, good at creating believable teens and teen circumstances, but avoids stereotypes.  It’s sadly rare to see good parents in current young adult fiction, so it’s refreshing that Blake’s mother and father exhibit good parenting skills, as well as being rounded, slightly odd characters.  Some mild sexual content and language. This book won the 2010 William C. Morris Debut Award for a first time author writing for teens. Ages 13 and up. (Source: Teen Scene from Wright Memorial Public Library) Thu, 05 Aug 2010 00:00:02 +0100 864601 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/aug/04/top-10-graphic-design-books From the extraordinary visual dexterity of Alan Fletcher to Jan Tschichold's experiments with typography, Patrick Cramsie picks the books that have shaped our visual culturePatrick Cramsie studied graphic design at London's Middlesex University before going on to work in an Anglo-Japanese design company and then later as a freelance designer. His design work has centred on corporate identity and book design, but alongside this he has written book reviews for the Times Literary Supplement and Tate Etc. His latest book, The Story of Graphic Design, covers 5,500 years of cultural history from the invention of writing to the birth of digital design."We live in a world of signs and symbols. Street signs, logos, labels, pictures and words in books, newspapers, magazines and now on our mobiles and computer screens; all these graphic shapes have been designed. They are so commonplace we seldom think of them as a single entity, "graphic design". Yet taken as a whole they are central to our modern way of life.  Nearly all of these books on graphic design appeal as much to the eye as to the mind, being beautiful as well as useful. In some, this marriage is so complete that they stand as archetypes of their medium; as specimens of perfection in book form." 1. Notes on Book Design by Derek Birdsall Though presented as a practical guide for designing books – how to lay out text and pictures or how to design a cover – this book is much more than that. It is written and designed by one of Britain's most accomplished book designers and then illustrated with some of the best examples of his work. Because the book practises what it preaches, it is as good to look at as to read; the union of form and content could hardly be bettered. Each spread could be taken and hung in a gallery and appreciated as a work of art.  2. ... Wed, 04 Aug 2010 12:09:46 +0100 864500 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/aug/04/chick-lit-debate-dj-connell The 'chick-lit' label does nothing for humorous female writers already suffering exclusion from an old boys' clubA funny thing happened to me on the way to getting published. I changed genders, or, to be more precise, I exchanged the 'Diane' of my given name for the neutral initials of 'DJ'. I had good reason for choosing a neutral pen name. I am deadly serious about writing humour and wanted my book to be judged on its merits and not according to my gender.In the funny-peculiar world of humorous literature, a female name is like an affliction. It repels potential readers looking for the "seriously funny" (apparently women do not write funny books) and encourages reviewers and booksellers to reach for a red marker and tag the work with the toe-curling label of "chick-lit". While my writing has nothing to do with career women, romance or white weddings, I take personal offence at the way women's fiction, particularly humorous fiction written by women, is still getting shunted to the back of the queue.I know I am not the first woman to comment on this but it is a remarkable situation considering the great leaps forward female writers have made in most other literary genres. Humour remains an old boys' club and the knee-jerk "if a woman writes a funny book it must be chick-lit" attitude is indicative of this club's male-only policy.Why do I find the chick-lit label so offensive? Because it not only condemns a work of humour to the ghetto of the light and frivolous but it is also ridiculously outdated. Who in Playboy Mansion Hell still refers to a woman as a chick?When you call a woman a chick you diminish her as a human being and dismiss her as something less than intelligent. It is a word for the likes of Hugh Hefner and other refugees from the pre-feminist, satin sheet and jacuzzi 60s and it is about as relevant as calling the police "the fuzz". ... Wed, 04 Aug 2010 09:15:45 +0100 864504 http://liszen.com/trends/story.php?title=Conversation_Making (Source: pligg - all) Wed, 04 Aug 2010 07:00:18 +0100 864459 http://collectingmythoughts.blogspot.com/2010/08/cbs-evening-news-anchor-couric.html Sorry, guys, as much as I think Katie isn't the right person for the nightly news job, I didn't find this "raw" footage damning. She's self-deprecating, and jokes. She chats like a hundred other women I know, but she's respectful. How many of us knew of or heard of Wasilla, or mooseburgers before Sarah Palin? Give it a rest. Katie did a poor job on her critical Palin interview which suffered from editing over which she may have not had control, but this video tells us nothing. Not even MSM or journolist bias.'CBS Evening News' Anchor Couric Ridiculed Palin from Day One; Mocks Son’s Name | NewsBusters.org (Source: Collecting my Thoughts) Wed, 04 Aug 2010 04:00:00 +0100 864526 http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/aug/04/celebrity-biography-jonathan-margolis Angelina Jolie is reportedly upset about a new unauthorised book about her, and Jonathan Margolis, author of several celeb biographies, is beginning to see whyThere can't be many people who feel a pang of empathy for Angelina Jolie, who, along with her PR team, is reportedly upset about an unauthorised biography of her by Andrew Morton.The assiduous Morton's book, apparently pieced together from interviews with unnamed sources – oh, and Jolie's childhood nanny – is a veritable juice-a-thon. In it, so it's being said in the States, we learn that Jolie once had a fling with Leonardo DiCaprio, that she was raised for two years by nannies in a Los Angeles serviced apartment, and that she has a tattoo on her bottom in honour of her former husband, Billy Bob Thornton, written in the helvetica font.Well, as a red-blooded hack of over 30 years' standing (some of this standing outside the firmly closed doors of celebrities), I have something a little bizarre to say. Owing to an odd recent turn of events, I think I'm slightly on Angelina Jolie's side on this.In the 90s, when I was green in judgement, red in bank account, I wrote a series of unauthorised biographies of figures in comedy whom I admired. The first was John Cleese, then Billy Connolly, Michael Palin, and last – my contractual-obligation album requested by the publishers because they thought it would sell – Lenny Henry. The books were pretty good and actually did sell OK, Lenny Henry apart (wherein lies a tale I'll mention in a bit).But my subjects suffered a lot of grief from their unauthorised biographies. Cleese wrote to everyone he knew asking them not to speak to me. Plenty did anyway, but Cleese later commented dismissively that he found 200 mistakes in the first chapter alone. Connolly was furious and I believe remains so. Palin, because I suspect he just can't help being nice, agreed to read the manuscript when I bumped into him at a reception. ... Tue, 03 Aug 2010 23:27:36 +0100 864316 http://lisnews.org/please_weed_these Huff Post points us to photos of the 9 Worst Library Books in a slide-show here. Every library has them: titles in the collection that we stumble upon and think, "What is this doing here?" "Weeding" is where librarians take a close look at our collections and remove items that are past their prime. They are outdated, irrelevant, or just plain funny. AwfulLibraryBooks is a collection of the worst of library holdings. The authors collect the discards of their colleagues around the world and post them (anonymously, of course). The point is to have fun, laugh, and celebrate the time and place when these old, obscure books were popular. (Source: LISNews.org) Tue, 03 Aug 2010 14:57:36 +0100 864220 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/lansinglibraryyouth/podcast/~3/Jr0EmhdMdIk/august-book-of-month.html "Happily ever after" doesn't always end the fairy tale, as Beauty finds out in Michael O. Tunnell's Beauty and the Beastly Children. After Prince Auguste--formerly known as the Beast--marries Beauty, he becomes vain and self-centered like he was before his curse made him the Beast. Auguste cares more about hanging out with his hunting buddies than running his kingdom. He collects undeserved awards instead of spending time with his wife. He isn't even present when his triplets are born. His thoughtless, careless ways irritate Beauty until she can't stand it.Worse, Auguste's bad habits affect his newborn sons. When Beauty and Auguste first lay eyes on their triplets, they discover that the fairy's curse on Auguste has carried over to his children, who look and act like wild monsters from the minute they're born. They grow fast...too fast. Soon they're tearing through the castle, wrecking everything they can, and scaring the life out of everyone. It's up to Auguste to tame his beastly offspring, but can he handle the job?This tongue-in-cheek sequel to Beauty and the Beast shows a parent's inner ugliness causing his children's outer ugliness, manifesting through bad behavior even more than through appearance. John Emil Cymerman draws character expressions that enhance feelings and attitudes with depth and precision; there's no mistaking Beauty's disgust toward her husband or Auguste's high opinion of himself. Tunnell delivers his tale with sly humor and everyday wisdom that parents can appreciate with their kids. (Source: Lansing Library Youth Dept. Podcast) Tue, 03 Aug 2010 14:36:12 +0100 864419 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/ezFR/~3/g3e4xWlnIms/ Gawker’s Valleywag section posts a tip it’s gotten, that Wired editor Chris Anderson is reportedly preparing a cover story for the magazine in which he declares that “the Web is Dead”. He will apparently argue that content is moving to more restricted corners of the ‘net, such as iPad and iPhone apps. According to Valleywag, this comes at a time when there is a “cold war” on between the print Wired Magazine and the on-line Wired Digital (Wired.com/Reddit) divisions—Anderson has reportedly called Wired.com a “business failure, generating little cash for publishing company Condé Nast” (though he claims he was misquoted). Of course, this declaration, if it actually happens (Anderson has refused to comment), must be looked at in light of the business goals of Condé Nast. Anymore, Wired.com actually carries relatively little content from the print (and now tablet) magazine, and what content it does carry usually comes a month or so after it sees publication in print. Meanwhile, Wired has developed an “underwhelming” app version of its magazine for tablets (and a separate one for the iPad, necessitated by Apple’s refusal to allow Flash or third-party development environments). It stands to reason Anderson would want to declare the unmonetizable web “dead” if it would push more people to subscribe to the costly iPad app. But wishing won’t necessarily make it so, and it’s still an open question whether, after the “new” wears off, people will still flock to an iPad version that is considerably more expensive than it would be to subscribe to the print edition. Prince and the Digital Revolution And Anderson would hardly be the first to declare the public ‘net to be passé. ... Tue, 03 Aug 2010 11:15:00 +0100 864399 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/aug/03/comedy-crime-capers The exhortation to 'write what you know' stops us finding the mirth in misdemeanours. Write what you like instead, urges Richard AsplinHere's a bizarre turn-up, as my tailor likes to say. Not seven weeks after crime novelist and macabre chuckle-vendor Colin Bateman went on record to say on this very site, how "the Crime Writers' Association Dagger awards shortlist is not noticeably troubled by anything likely to put a smile on your face" then, slap my deerstalker and call me Marple, my comic-crime-confidence-caper Conman gets a nomination. There it sits, squirming and giggling and fidgeting like an adolescent among the grown-up company of James Lee Burke and George Pelecanos. And yes, perhaps Conman may see itself told off for farting and flicking bogies come the final. But there it is, beaming like a gate-crashing twit with a whoopee cushion.But why should it feel like such a literary gatecrasher? From Chaucer to Wodehouse to Waugh, the English sense of humour has always proudly been held dear and adored. As a nation we love to laugh and take great pleasure in wordplay, waggery and wit.Well perhaps this is part of the problem.I was chatting this evening to a caper-phobe in the pub and we agreed that frankly, as genres go, the hilarious heist is like religion, tailfins and questionable foreign policy – the Americans do it best. Hiaasen, Evanovich, Block and the wonderful Kinky Friedman are all across the pond in the USA, mixing larceny and laughs to huge success. And this was this fellow's problem. The Americans do it, he said, the Brits by and large, don't. So any comic-crime novel he picks up is likely to have an American sense of humour, rather than that oh-so-beloved English one he craves.Not true of other genres of course. Fantasy, sci-fi, history, travelogues – all have fine English writers taking potshots at cliché and convention. ... Tue, 03 Aug 2010 10:36:35 +0100 864176 http://liszen.com/trends/story.php?title=Grooming_Personal (Source: pligg - all) Tue, 03 Aug 2010 07:00:28 +0100 864478 http://obpl.blogspot.com/2010/08/friday-august-6th-at-630-p.html Friday, August 6th at 6:30 p.m. Enjoy an evening of sketch comedy with Pangea 3000!Pangea 3000 is a sketch comedy group comprised of writers for The Onion and CollegeHumor. They perform regularly at the UCB Theater in New York and in sketch comedy festivals across the nation. Its members have appeared on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, The NFL Network, and the podcast The Sound of Young America.Send comments to Darren. (Source: Old Bridge Library Weblog) Tue, 03 Aug 2010 04:00:00 +0100 864588 http://ksulib.typepad.com/talking/2010/08/kkeepsakes-alma-mater.html 25th in the Series In the spring of 1902, students belonging to K-State's literary societies recognized that, unlike other  institutions, their school lacked a college song.  Feeling that students needed to express their true devotion to K-State through music, a student committee was formed to devise and supervise a contest to  select a college song.  The contest was announced in the Students' Herald (a predecessor to the Collegian) and students and alumni were  encouraged to write and submit a song to committee member Sarah Hougham, a senior in the Class of 1903, by October 1, 1902.  The winner would receive a $25 prize and a lasting "reputation"! In the August 7 issue of the newspaper, students and alumni were implored to take   an interest ("We need a song and need it badly"), an interest that had been extremely high several months earlier when the contest was announced.  By  September only six entries had been received so members of the committee urged students to "wake up...and get in the humor to write a rousing good song for K.S.A.C." before the fast approaching deadline.  The song committee again begged students to contribute "a first class song" to the contest for a "chance for development and glory"; an advertisement was also placed in the newspaper.In the October 30, 1902 issue of the Students' Herald, it was announced that 14 songs had been submitted and the committee sent three to the judges for consideration, one each from the faculty, alumni, and student body.  The judges concluded that none of them were "entirely suited for the purpose of a K.S.A.C. song."  Undaunted and adamant that their beloved school needed a college song, the committee extended the contest to January 8, 1903. ... Mon, 02 Aug 2010 04:00:00 +0100 866506 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/kkJF/~3/jGcd64Dsubc/een-kijkje-in-de-toekomst-die-nooit.html Het weblog Paleo-Future, dat als credo A look into the future that never was heeft, is de mooiste ontdekking van vandaag. Eric Sieverts verwees al eens naar een toekomstvoorspelling voor bibliotheken uit 1972, hier wordt er een getoond uit 1959. Als je toch bezig bent kun je ook wel even naar Movies Will Replace Textbooks uit 1922, en naar Thinks We'll Do Our Reading on Screen uit 1923 loeren. Fun! @ (Source: Digitaal Inlichtingenwerk Zeeuwse Bibliotheek) Sun, 01 Aug 2010 12:56:00 +0100 863713 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/LansingLibraryYouthNewsBlog/~3/Jr0EmhdMdIk/august-book-of-month.html "Happily ever after" doesn't always end the fairy tale, as Beauty finds out in Michael O. Tunnell's Beauty and the Beastly Children. After Prince Auguste--formerly known as the Beast--marries Beauty, he becomes vain and self-centered like he was before his curse made him the Beast. Auguste cares more about hanging out with his hunting buddies than running his kingdom. He collects undeserved awards instead of spending time with his wife. He isn't even present when his triplets are born. His thoughtless, careless ways irritate Beauty until she can't stand it.Worse, Auguste's bad habits affect his newborn sons. When Beauty and Auguste first lay eyes on their triplets, they discover that the fairy's curse on Auguste has carried over to his children, who look and act like wild monsters from the minute they're born. They grow fast...too fast. Soon they're tearing through the castle, wrecking everything they can, and scaring the life out of everyone. It's up to Auguste to tame his beastly offspring, but can he handle the job?This tongue-in-cheek sequel to Beauty and the Beast shows a parent's inner ugliness causing his children's outer ugliness, manifesting through bad behavior even more than through appearance. John Emil Cymerman draws character expressions that enhance feelings and attitudes with depth and precision; there's no mistaking Beauty's disgust toward her husband or Auguste's high opinion of himself. Tunnell delivers his tale with sly humor and everyday wisdom that parents can appreciate with their kids. (Source: Lansing Library Youth News) Sun, 01 Aug 2010 04:00:00 +0100 868339 http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2010/aug/01/how-escaped-certain-fate-stewart-lee One of Britain's most trenchant comics offers a fascinating insight into creating comedyStewart Lee is the most enigmatic of comedians: a thoughtful, softly spoken man who somehow managed to become a hate figure for the 65,000 people who complained to the BBC about his musical, Jerry Springer: The Opera. And they didn't just complain, they complained in advance, anticipating their inevitable fury and disapproval, and making it known before the show was broadcast, presumably fearful of being so appalled by the musical that they would subsequently lose the ability to type. It's that very fear that has always held me back from watching Mamma Mia.But although Lee is notorious for this debacle, he is also renowned for being one of the best comedians alive. His slow, measured voice, his sulky, hectoring manner, and his relentlessly logical fury make him a compelling stand-up. In an industry where blandness is often rewarded above all else, Stewart Lee is an oasis of intellect and originality. He is unlikely to appear at the Royal Variety Performance any time soon (unless the Queen expresses an interest in material about the professional ethics of Joe Pasquale), and nor should he. It may be bad for his bank balance, but Lee's audience see him as the king of counter-culture. If he sold out, became smiley and easygoing, their sad hearts would surely break.How I Escaped My Certain Fate: The Life and Deaths of a Stand-up Comedian will be required reading for comedy fans. Among other things, the book contains the transcripts of three of his critically acclaimed shows, heavily annotated as Lee explains how he chose a particular joke, or how this section was improvised differently each night, or why this line needs to be in this spot to prepare the audience for the next section. He is analytical, critical and perfectly willing to say when he finds himself proud of something he wrote, or occasionally ashamed. ... Sat, 31 Jul 2010 23:14:52 +0100 863666 http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2010/aug/01/stewart-lee-collecting-comics-stand-up What happens to a man who compulsively collects comics, books, records and CDs? He becomes very good at building shelves… Comedian Stewart Lee on the challenges and hazards of extreme storageWhat are days for?" asks the curmudgeonly poet Philip Larkin in his poem Days, questioning the very point of living. He is unable to offer any real comfort, concluding: "Ah, solving that question/brings the priest and the doctor/in their long coats/running over the fields." For Larkin the idea of days, and what to do with them, represents the problem of existence boiled down to its barest essentials. I have a similar relationship with shelves.I love shelves, and if only I could work out exactly which of the many books, comics, records and compact discs that I own I should fill them with, and how many shelves I require to do this, I have always imagined my life would be complete. At the age of 43, I am finally in a solid-looking house, with my solid-looking family, where I imagine, uncharacteristically, I will stay for some time. I am well on the way, through my own efforts and those of contracted shelving professionals, to having the shelving system I have dreamed of since childhood, most of it concealed in nooks, cellars and the designated shelf room, so as not to destroy the internal integrity of our long-dreamed-of living space. But even as the shelves approach their final configuration, it seems the same doubts and fears about life and its purpose linger on, as if the answer to everything did not lie in the construction of shelving systems after all. I wonder where this profound faith in shelving began.When I was about five years old, I bought a copy of an American comic book called Captain Marvel off the lower rung of a revolving rack of True Detective, soft porn and pulpy thriller magazines, in a newsagent on the A34 just outside Birmingham. I was snagged. ... Sat, 31 Jul 2010 23:07:52 +0100 863668 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/aug/01/lydia-davis-interview-reaction-proust Lydia Davis is famous for writing short pieces that are sometimes only a sentence long. Here she explains why that doesn't stop them being storiesLydia Davis is an American short story writer whose work redefines the meaning of brevity. While a few of her stories are of a conventional length, most range from one to three pages, and many are shorter still, occupying as little as a paragraph or a sentence. Here, for example, is one of Davis's better-known but least voluminous works, "A Double Negative":At a certain point in her life, she realizes it is not so much that she wants to have a child as that she does not want not to have a child, or not to have had a child.And here, from her 2007 collection, Varieties of Disturbance, is "Idea for a Short Documentary Film":Representatives of different food product manufacturers try to open their own packaging. As these examples suggest, Davis's stories often appear to be little more than snapshots of thought, records of fleeting amusement, bafflement or illumination. Lacking, as they do, much of what we expect from a story – a setting, sustained narrative, characters with names – it's tempting to doubt whether "story" is even the right word for them. Wouldn't some other term, such as philosophical reflection or prose poem, be more suitable?When I ask Davis this – she is speaking from her home in upstate New York – she explains that while she can see why her work attracts a variety of labels, she is happy to stick with "story". "When I first began writing seriously, I wrote short stories, and that was where I thought I was headed. Then the stories evolved and changed, but it would have become a bother to say every time, 'I guess what I have just written is a prose poem, or a meditation', and I would have felt very constrained by trying to label each individual work, so it was simply easier to call everything stories. ... Sat, 31 Jul 2010 23:06:06 +0100 863670 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/aug/01/emily-gould-meghan-daum-confessional Candace Bushnell's Sex and the City columns inspired some dire chick lit, but also a generation of more serious young writersEmily Gould still finds it irritating when she gets stuck behind a group of women walking four abreast along a New York pavement, intent on imitating the infamous Sex and the City line-up. "Really, two of you should walk behind and allow other people to walk past," Gould says with a groan. "It's one of many things that upsets me about Candace Bushnell."But for all that she might get annoyed by those high-heeled women on the sidewalk, without Sex and the City, there would arguably have been no Emily Gould. The 28-year-old has just published her first confessional memoir, And The Heart Says Whatever. In 11 pithily written essays, Gould, a former co-editor of the Gawker gossip website, charts her experiences as a young adult in New York, working in jobs she loathes, facing up to failed relationships and going to parties attended by people she dislikes. Her debut has already attracted praise from the likes of Jonathan Franzen, while Curtis Sittenfeld, the author of American Wife, has hailed it as a modern-day version of The Bell Jar. Gould is one of a new generation of female confessional writers who, according to Sittenfeld, "speak, in our often phoney and cheesy culture, to the truths of women's lives".Before Candace Bushnell, books like Gould's that sought to capture the dilemmas and dichotomies of modern womanhood with a wry, humorous honesty, were almost unheard of. For decades, the experiences of ordinary women had been largely overlooked by the literary world: either it was recounted in fictional terms (as in Mary McCarthy's The Group) or it was relayed anonymously by feminist polemicists and social historians (Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique). Bushnell changed all that. ... Sat, 31 Jul 2010 23:06:04 +0100 863671 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/aug/01/room-emma-donoghue-review-fritzl Inspired by the Josef Fritzl case, Emma Donoghue's much-hyped seventh novel is a gem, says Nicola BarrMuch hyped on acquisition and by its publisher since (and longlisted for the Booker prize last week), Room is set to be one of the big literary hits of the year. Certainly it is Emma Donoghue's breakout novel, but, seemingly "inspired" by Josef Fritzl's incarceration of his daughter Elisabeth, and the cases of Natascha Kampusch and Sabine Dardenne, it's hard not to feel wary: what is such potentially lurid and voyeuristic material doing in the hands of a novelist known for quirky, stylish literary fiction?It is a brave act for a writer, but happily one that Donoghue, still only 40 but on her seventh novel, has the talent to pull off. For Room is in many ways what its publisher claims it to be: a novel like no other. The first half takes place entirely within the 12-foot-square room in which a young woman has spent her last seven years since being abducted aged 19. Raped repeatedly, she now has a five-year-old boy, Jack, and it is with his voice that Donoghue tells their story.And what a voice it is. "Ma" has clearly spent his five years devoting every scrap of mental energy to teaching, nurturing and entertaining her boy, preserving her own sanity in the process. To read this book is to stumble on a completely private world. Every family unit has its own language of codes and in-jokes, and Donoghue captures this exquisitely. Ma has created characters out of all aspects of their room – Wardrobe, Rug, Plant, Meltedy Spoon. They have a TV and Jack loves Dora the Explorer, but Ma limits the time they are allowed to watch it for fear of turning their brains to mush. ... Sat, 31 Jul 2010 23:05:58 +0100 863674 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/aug/01/nicholson-baker-the-anthologist-review Nicholson Baker's novel about a failed poet is a delightAs literary enticements go, spending the duration of a novel in the company of a washed-up poet with writer's block and girlfriend issues is not exactly a high-ranker. Two pages into Nicholson Baker's The Anthologist, the narrator tells us: "My life is a lie. My career is a joke. I'm a study in failure." He's been trying to write an introduction to his anthology of rhyming poetry for so long, his partner has left him in exasperation. The high-point of his career so far has been a series of well-received "flying spoon" poems. But now, as he settles into his 50s, his inspiration is drying up, as are his finances. The only thing not drying up is his daily intake of Newcastle Brown Ale.So why is The Anthologist such a delight? It's down to Baker's easygoing and effortlessly comic prose, and the affable charm his narrator emanates from the very first line: "Hello, this is Paul Chowder, and I'm going to try to tell you everything I know."This narrative, it turns out, is an elaborate strategy to avoid sitting down and writing the 40-page introduction and sending it off to his anxious publisher. Instead, Chowder takes us on a ramble around the poetic form, and into the neurotic mind of the professional poet. Along the way, he'll attempt to convince us that the adoption of the iambic pentameter into English-language verse was a big mistake, and that it's a crying shame so few poems have dared to rhyme since modernism crashed the party. He'll get all shivery over lines by Swinburne and Louise Bogan. He'll warn us about the perils of ultra-extreme enjambment.Chowder's personal history of poetry is of course a shambles. He keeps dropping his Sharpie whiteboard pen, and cutting his finger, and breaking off to update us on his ex-girlfriend Roz or his dog Smacko or the goings-on in his mellow New England neighbourhood. ... Sat, 31 Jul 2010 23:05:52 +0100 863678 http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2010/aug/01/sue-townsend-kate-kellaway The Adrian Mole author on seeing her best-known character grow up, blindness and receiving a kidney from her sonDo you have plans to kill Adrian Mole off?The only way I'll kill Adrian is when I die myself.What's your relationship with him like now?I made the mistake in the early books of making him not very attractive. But I have recently fallen in love with him. He has got older. He has taken advice from women on clothes and hair. Tragic happenings make him attractive as well. He has come to learn you don't need things. There is joy in seeing a tree come into blossom.Do you feel the same yourself?Adrian Mole, c'est moi.The Prostrate Years includes startling comedy – a dead guide dog chapter…It is the third dead dog Adrian has buried. He asks: why does everyone ask me to bury their dead dogs?If you had not been registered blind, could you have written this way?No, I wouldn't have dared.Have you got a guide dog?No, but we have Bill, a black labrador.You once likened yourself to a golden labrador?Yes, I hate it when people call me a "national treasure". It takes away your bite and makes you feel like a harmless old golden labrador.Any other labrador attributes?Yes – I am usually overweight. I have had to be interested in diet because of being diabetic for 30 years and having kidney failure. Did you know I had a transplant last year?I read that your son donated his kidney – that must have been traumatic…Not for me. But for him, I think – he was giving away a healthy organ. It was incredibly brave.Did you have counselling beforehand?No – a talk with a vicar. I am surrounded by counsellors. My sister is a counsellor. My daughter is training to be a counsellor. A lot of my friends are counsellors.And could you be a counsellor?I have been, unofficially, for years.Was it useful talking to the vicar?No. I had my husband and son in the room. That was a mistake. I might have wanted to talk about how scared I was about my son and couldn't. ... Sat, 31 Jul 2010 23:05:00 +0100 863681 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/01/goran-lindberg-sweden-crime-palme The Sweden of Henning Mankell and Stieg Larsson - all shadowy rightwing conspiracies and prostitution rings – might not be so far from the truthIf there was ever a real-life policeman who came close in progressive Swedish affections to Kurt Wallander, the bestselling creation of Henning Mankell, it would probably be Göran Lindberg, chief of police of Uppsala, the city north of Stockholm that is home to Sweden's most prestigious university. Although he lacked Wallander's humility and reticence, Lindberg was concerned, like Wallander, with the marginalised and neglected in Swedish society. He was the sponsor of a sanctuary for abused juveniles, for example, and was at the forefront of the campaign to institute a more sympathetic response to rape victims.In particular Lindberg was a staunch enemy of sexism in the police force. He argued with colleagues, made speeches and built up a reputation as a tireless proponent of women's rights. So vocal was Lindberg that he ruffled the epaulettes of fellow policemen. "His colleagues," says PJ Anders Linder, political editor-in-chief of the newspaper Svenska Dagbladet, "were obviously not quite as obsessed with the issue as he was. He seemed to be like a civil servant who had decided that this was how he was going to make his mark."And he did. From early in his career, Lindberg was seen by the authorities as a policing role model and was duly made the national spokesperson on sex equality in the police force. Pretty soon he established a reputation as Sweden's leading progressive policeman. So renowned was Lindberg for his political correctness and sensitivity towards women's issues that he was nicknamed "Captain Skirt". In spite of the jokes, he was rapidly promoted, becoming the dean of the police training college and eventually the police chief of Uppsala.In January this year, following a six-month investigation, Lindberg was arrested. ... Sat, 31 Jul 2010 23:02:55 +0100 863686 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/aug/01/kate-kellaway-poetry-book-of-the-month Jo Shapcott's enigmatic poems fight shy of referring directly to her battle with cancerOf Mutability is, as its title suggests, a protean collection: the poems keep shifting ground, subtly transforming themselves – you need to watch Jo Shapcott like a hawk. Or, perhaps, like a barn owl. In her audaciously successful "Night Flight from Muncaster", she wastes no time in asking for audience participation:"Reader, you're an owl/ for this moment, your flower-face a white scrawl/ in the dark, a feather frill."And, as an owl, furnished in feathers and by her imagination, we fly exhilaratingly and unexpectedly towards the sea. But most of the poems do not have the freedom to be fly-by-nights: this collection, her first in 12 years, was written after a breast cancer diagnosis and there is a sense, throughout, of what it might mean to have your wings clipped.Cancer is not mentioned – never dignified with a name. It is characteristic of Shapcott to avoid the banality of straight autobiography. Instead, her illness exists as an anarchic rabble of cells in the body of her texts: "Too many of the best cells in my body/are itching, feeling jagged, turning raw/in this spring chill…" Of Mutability is also a homage to the artist Helen Chadwick (the title borrowed from her 1986 exhibition). Like Chadwick, Shapcott is interested in where the body begins and ends, the extent to which we overspill boundaries and become more than figures in a landscape – a permeable part of what we see. In "Viral Landscape", the body and a baking summer field are strangely fused: "I went outside and found the landscape/which had eaten my heart."Shapcott is interested in non-verbal perception. She reminds us that language is the greatest agent of change. As we seize on one word rather than another, we transform our experience and discard alternative accounts. There is a small coppice of poems about trees. ... Sat, 31 Jul 2010 23:02:52 +0100 863687 http://www.swissarmylibrarian.net/2010/07/31/reference-question-of-the-week-72510 This question wasn’t difficult at all, just surprising. One of our semi-regular patrons, an elderly woman, came over to the desk and asked for help at a computer. When we got back to where she was working, she explained that she had moved from one end of her retirement complex to the other, and was on the Post Office’s website trying to change her address. She was stuck on the first step - the difference between a “permanent” move and a “temporary” move. She felt, at her age (86), she wanted to get a second opinion on how “permanent” I thought her move was. I know she has a good sense of humor, but I honestly couldn’t tell if she was kidding this time. We got her through that step, and I went back to the desk. The whole process is only about five screens, but over the course of the next half-hour, she came back twice more to ask for help. It was a busy day so I wasn’t able to stay with her, and usually she’s very good on the computer. However, the last question stumped us both: they required her type in her credit card number, and were going to charge her $1.00 to change her address. Well, after a half an hour of frustration, that was the last straw. I know you can do change of addresses at the Post Office for free, so she said she was going to go right over to do it the old-fashioned way, and to give them a piece of her mind. Initially, I thought this was another annoying example of an online place charging service fees or “internet surcharge” to use their website. I see this a lot buying tickets and things online, and to my mind, it seems like a pure scam - buying online should provide a discount, since it saves them effort. After the patron left, I went back to the website to see if they mentioned this $1 fee earlier in the process. ... Sat, 31 Jul 2010 14:06:34 +0100 863914 http://marincountyfreelibrary.blogspot.com/2010_07_01_archive.html#5877965213353370424 Join us for magic, jokes and juggling!Performer, Owen Baker-Flynn, captivates audiences of every age.Ages 3 and up.When: Wednesday August 4, 11:00amWhere: South Novato LibraryFor more information, call 415-506-3165. Sponsored by the Friends of the Novato Libraries (Source: Marin County Free Library Blog) Sat, 31 Jul 2010 04:00:00 +0100 864580 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jul/31/the-slap-christos-tsiolkas-booker Panel's chairman defends portrayal of 'curdled love' as reviews range from excitement to criticism of 'unbelievable misogyny'Christos Tsiolkas's Man Booker-longlisted novel The Slap opens with a bang when a man at a suburban barbecue hits another parent's child.But while some readers including, evidently, the Booker judges speak excitedly of the Australian author's bravery in tackling uncomfortable truths, others criticise the word-of-mouth hit as "offensive" and say it is full of "unbelievable misogyny". The Slap is turning out to be the most divisive Booker novel in years.Although reviews from newspaper critics have been positive – "riveting from beginning to end," said the Guardian ; "Tom Wolfe meets Philip Roth," said the Los Angeles Times – readers posting reviews online have far more mixed opinions."Dull, boring and offensive," wrote one Amazon reviewer. Another criticised its "constant obsession with bodily functions, sex, and the f-word"; another wrote that "it had no heart, such terrible cynicism … I feel soiled after reading it".The writer India Knight said she hated the book. "The whole novel has this ludicrous, comedy-macho sensibility – you get the feeling that if he'd been forced to read 'literary' fiction, Raoul Moat would have gulped it down in one sitting," said Knight."It's also unbelievably misogynistic, and I say that as someone who loves Flashman and Philip Roth ... There is no joy, no love, no hope, no beauty, just these hideous people beating each other up, either physically or emotionally."The Slap is a bestseller in Australia, and UK sales are already rumoured to be colossal.A publishing insider said the novel had sold 23,000 copies even before the Booker announcement, an almost unheard-of figure for new literary fiction from a relatively unknown author. The novel also won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. ... Fri, 30 Jul 2010 23:08:16 +0100 863502 http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2010/jul/31/melodrama-national-theatre-southbank-cutouts The National Theatre is reviving the toy theatres popular in the 19th century to stage melodramas on an epic scale. Vera Rule, who adapted the old scripts, explains their historyMelodrama was first created in the 1790s. Technically, it was drama with music (melos), a novel background accompaniment that led emotion and mood as a score does in modern movies, but the name soon designated a new form of theatre, a fusion of high intentions and low entertainment into pop Romanticism.Before that, only legitimate royal theatres had been licensed in European capitals to stage proper drama, with censor-vetted dialogue, before persons of quality. All other attractions, for example, fairground booths (such as Richardson's tent, where Edmund Kean learned his business in the flare of vats of burning fat), had to find amusements that didn't infringe the regulations – song, ballet, mime, rope-dancing, stilt-walking, fights or animal acts. London audiences – straying gentry, relaxing workmen and trade families – began to take short walks out of town to experimental venues, the closest being beyond the south bank of the Thames. To London Bridge was added Westminster Bridge in 1750; then Blackfriars, 1769, and Waterloo, 1817, and on the other side of them were pleasure places, such as Philip Astley's enclosure, where he gave displays of horsemanship and later upgraded it to an "amphitheatre", with circus acts. The name "circus", however, was the property of Astley's rival, Charles Dibdin, who adapted a riding school into the Royal Circus, which evolved through burnings down and buildings up into the Surrey Theatre. A third transpontine house, the Royal Coburg (still with us as the Old Vic) was added later.The paying bums on their multiplying seats demanded spectacular scenery made visible by lighting improvements (reliable oil lamps, then gas) and special effects: trapdoors, projections and fireworks. ... Fri, 30 Jul 2010 23:06:19 +0100 863505 http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2010/jul/31/jack-higgins-life-harry-patterson 'My goal was to write books that made money'Within the space of a single week in 1975 Harry Patterson's life was transformed. It had started in pretty much the same way as every previous week of the past 15 years, with Patterson supplementing his day job as a college lecturer in Leeds by writing moderately successful thrillers in his spare time; it ended with the publication of The Eagle Has Landed, about a plot to kidnap Churchill, written under the pseudonym of Jack Higgins, and a phone call from his accountant."He asked me what I wanted to get out of my writing," Higgins says. "I replied that I wasn't really sure, before adding as a joke it would be nice to make a million by the time I retired. He then said: 'Well you're a bloody fool. Because you've just earned that much this week. So what are you going to do about it?'"Back in the 1970s it was a reasonable question. The highest rate of income tax was 83p in the pound, with a further 98p in the pound disappearing on any interest earned, and Higgins was advised to become a tax exile if he wanted to hang on to any of his earnings. So he upped sticks almost overnight – leaving his wife and kids back in Leeds until he could sort out somewhere to live – and moved to Jersey. He's been there ever since."I didn't really want to go," he says. "And if the tax rates had been as they are now – or even at 50p in the pound – I'd have stayed in England. I had a good life there and I was happy; but I'd never had any real money and I wanted the security. And there have been downsides. I've missed old friends, my kids have all grown up and gone back to the mainland to work, my wife has had to go back to England for long periods for cancer treatment, and it can get quite lonely. I suppose I could move back now, but I'm getting old and haven't been that well myself . . . ... Fri, 30 Jul 2010 23:06:11 +0100 863506 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jul/31/thomas-pynchon-vineland-rereading Far from being 'a breather between biggies' as it was described by critics when it was first published 20 years ago, Thomas Pynchon's Vineland is one of his greatest achievements, argues Andy BeckettIn 1993, when I first read Vineland, Thomas Pynchon's great novel about washed-up 60s radicals, I was living in northern California with two middle-aged hippies. A certain bohemianism and lawlessness still lingered in their creaking house in Berkeley. The cable TV service was siphoned off from a neighbouring property. One housemate drank rank-smelling wheatgrass for her breakfast. The other disappeared at weekends on unspecified operations against the logging companies in the redwood forests up near the Oregon border. When she was home, she almost never left her basement room. She emphatically instructed me to deny her existence if anyone called.I was an inquisitive male postgraduate in my early 20s: a classic potential Pynchon reader. One day after the winter had set in, with its low skies and week-long rains, I went down to one of the bookshops on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, where some of the legendary 60s student demonstrations had taken place, and bought Vineland.The book had come out three years earlier, to approving but subtly disappointed reviews. Pynchon's previous novel, the seemingly all-encompassing second world war adventure and postmodern box of tricks Gravity's Rainbow, had been published in 1973; during the 17-year wait for a follow-up, all sorts of rumours had spread about what the famously brainy and reclusive American prodigy, only 35 in 1973, would produce next. "We heard he was doing something about Lewis and Clark," Salman Rushdie wrote in the New York Times in 1990. "Mason and Dixon? A Japanese science-fiction novel? . . . ... Fri, 30 Jul 2010 23:06:10 +0100 863507 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jul/31/shades-greene-jeremy-lewis-review Graham is famous, but what about the other Greenes? Ian Thomson investigatesGraham Greene's darkest entertainment, The Third Man, ends with a shoot-out in the sewers of Vienna and the death of the penicillin racketeer Harry Lime. A convert to Catholicism, Greene had found a suitable image for man's fallen state in the city's reeking underworld. And Lime, with his opportunist loyalties, is a familiar Greene character, whose surname suggests the quicklime in which murderers were said to be buried. One could see him as a fictional counterpart of the British double-agent Kim Philby, who had betrayed fellow spies to the Soviet Union. Philby had earlier helped communists to escape through the Vienna sewers in 1934; newspapers later dubbed him "the Third Man" (a soubriquet that has lost none of its resonance in the era of Peter Mandelson).Written in 1948 as a film treatment, The Third Man made much of east-west border tensions and, as such, reflected a personal anxiety of Greene's. Frontiers have a dynamism of their own in his fiction, and typically set off a reflex of unease. The novelist's father, Charles Greene, had been the pious Anglican headmaster of a public school in Berkhamsted near London, and each day Greene experienced divided loyalties as he left the family quarters to go to class. His literary gift, later, was to locate the moment of crisis when a character transgresses a border of some sort, whether geographical, religious or political, and life is exposed in all its drab wonder.Greene came from a family that guarded its secrets. His five brothers and sisters were all, in their different ways, involved in acts of subterfuge. The eldest brother Herbert was, in the words of Jeremy Lewis, a "shabby fantasist" who consorted with remittance men and confidence-tricksters. ... Fri, 30 Jul 2010 23:06:06 +0100 863511 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jul/31/rain-don-paterson-lezard-review Nicholas Lezard on words like hammer blowsPaul Muldoon is quoted on the back cover of this book: "Don Paterson is simply the most interesting mid-career poet at work in the UK." This might look, to the casual glance, like faint praise, but it isn't. And although I am not thoroughly acquainted with the work of every mid-career poet in the UK, it looks like a plausible assertion, and given the number of awards he's won for his work (Forward prize for this book, Queen's Gold medal, TS Eliot prize, even an OBE) you could justifiably replace "most interesting" with "best". If you didn't mind hurting the feelings of other mid-career UK poets.Nearer the beginning of his career Paterson traded on a damaged and damaging masculinity, as in the lines from "Imperial" in his second collection, the cheekily titled God's Gift to Women (these lines are the ones you'll find most often quoted): "and no trade was ever so fair or so tender; / so where was the flaw in the plan, / the night we lay down on the flag of surrender / and woke on the flag of Japan . . ."Fatherhood, if I read the internal evidence of this new collection correctly, has mellowed him, but hasn't diminished the technical mastery. This doesn't simply mean the nicely startling turn of phrase which notices that a tree and a bush buffeted by unheard winds look like, respectively, "a woman mad with grief" and "a panicked silver shoal": it means a fine control of rhythm and rhyme, those two often-neglected handmaidens to poetry. (Paterson, who holds Dante in huge regard, isn't going to neglect them himself.)Here he is describing his son in "The Circle": "My boy is painting outer space, / and steadies his brush-tip to trace / the comets, planets, moon and sun / and all the circuitry they run / in one great heavenly design. / But when he tries to close the line / he draws around his upturned cup, / his hand shakes, and he screws it up. ... Fri, 30 Jul 2010 23:06:06 +0100 863510 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jul/31/venice-india-america-travel-audiobooks Sue Arnold's audiobook choiceVenice, by Jan Morris, read by Sebastian Comberti (13hrs unabridged, Naxos, £35)"I was in my 20s when I wrote this," says Morris in the introduction to her best known travel book, "and I like to think that its faults are the heady faults of youth." What faults? Fifty years on, it is still the best all-round guide to a city that, despite the ever-present hordes of tourists, remains the most magical destination on earth. Listening to this equally magical audio made me long to go back and check out all those less touristy bits that so enthralled young Morris – the alley too narrow for Browning to open his umbrella, the crypt allegedly containing Mary Magdalen's finger, the fish market "laden with sleek wriggling eels, still pugnaciously alive, beautiful little red fish packed in boxes like shampoos, heads upwards . . . soft bulbous octopus furiously injecting ink . . . a multitude of sea matter . . . sliding, sinuous, shimmering, flabby, spongy, crisp, all lying aghast upon their fresh green biers dead, doomed or panting like a grove of brilliant foliage among the tundra of Venetian stone." Yes, the descriptions do go on a bit, but that's part of the charm. It was written, says Morris, "in a rush of enthusiasm like the splurge of a love affair". The enthusiasm is infectious. Venetian history, culture, religion, food – she relishes them all, from the glory years between the 12th and 15th centuries when La Serenissima controlled the trade routes between east and west, to the nuns at one of the more fashionable convents claiming their right to supply a mistress for the new papal nuncio, to the notice on the Grand Canal: "It is forbidden to spit on the swimmers." Don't go to Venice without it.The Story of India, by Michael Wood, read by Sam Dastor (10hrs unabridged, BBC, £26. ... Fri, 30 Jul 2010 23:06:04 +0100 863514 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jul/31/c-tom-mccarthy-novel-review Christopher Tayler on the experimental art of Tom McCarthyThis book is something you don't see every day: a novel steeped in both high modernism and continental philosophy that's being rolled out as a publishing event in the UK and US. Tom McCarthy, its author, is a 41-year-old Londoner who went to Dulwich College and studied English at Oxford when the literary theory boom was at its height. After spending time in Prague and Amsterdam, he surfaced in 1999 as the general secretary of the International Necronautical Society, a semi-fictitious avant-garde group co-masterminded by the philosopher Simon Critchley, and began to stage events at such venues as the ICA. His first novel, Remainder (2005), later described by Zadie Smith as "one of the great English novels of the past 10 years", was originally put out by a Paris-based art publisher, and though another novel, Men in Space (2007), and a book on Tintin soon followed, he was more of a figure on the gallery circuit than in the literary world until Remainder's reputation began to mushroom.In articles, lectures and interviews, McCarthy speaks the language of post-humanism. His allegiance is to James Joyce and Samuel Beckett, the French nouveau roman and post-structuralist modes of thought; with a few exceptions, such as William Burroughs and Thomas Pynchon, most English-language writing since modernism's heyday can be written off as naive, reactionary stuff. It's bracing and fun to see these views being aired in a stubbornly non-modernistic literary culture. But McCarthy's art world affiliations, and the rather arts-institutional intellectual currency he trades in, also raise the suspicion that his end product might turn out to be a bit pretentious, in the style of Deleuze-loving architecture theorists or Lacan-quoting gallery notes. ... Fri, 30 Jul 2010 23:06:01 +0100 863518 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jul/31/nicholas-shakespeare-inheritance-review Frank Cottrell Boyce takes a rollercoaster ride with a blundering but 'lucky' manOne of the most fascinating conversations I've ever had was with a woman who worked as a counsellor for the National Lottery, advising winners on how to cope with the stress of sudden wealth. For most people, she said, the discontinuity was so enormous that it was best to think of winning as a kind of bereavement. Nicholas Shakespeare has taken that theme of discontinuity to heart in this tale of a man who accidentally inherits a fortune, to the point where his story feels like two very different novels with one title.Andy Larkham is a disorganised, impecunious editor of exploitative self-help books (Make Your Black Dog Your Guide Dog), who is prone to fortunate mistakes. He first connects with his beautiful fiancée when he talks to her about his visit to Grand Forks – her tiny midwestern home town. Only much later does he realise that the town he visited was actually called Grand Falls and wasn't in the midwest at all. By then, though, he's engaged. It's one thing to get lucky, it's another to run with your luck: the girl soon tires of Andy, dumping him in a restaurant while her new boyfriend watches from behind his book at a nearby table.Andy blunders into more good fortune when he shows up late for the funeral of his favourite schoolteacher and dashes into the wrong chapel. It turns out he has accidentally fulfilled the terms of the dead stranger's will and inherited £17m. The scene in the crematorium – with its portion-control sympathy and nonplussed etiquette – is painfully funny but also oddly convincing, and sets you up to watch Andy screaming as he rides the money rollercoaster. In fact the book changes direction completely at this point. The subject of what Andy will do with the money is dropped in favour of a story about where the money came from. ... Fri, 30 Jul 2010 23:05:59 +0100 863521 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jul/31/bookslams-literary-events-books In pubs and arts venues up and down the country traditional book readings are being replaced by a combination of cabaret, comedy and club nights. The results, Alex Clark discovers, are great fun'This is my Fight Club," says Todd Zuniga, the editor of American creative writing magazine Opium and the inventor of Literary Death Match, who is already confusing me with his appearance: strikingly fresh-faced, he tells me he is 35; exuding hipness, he is nonetheless wearing a slightly grotesque white jacket with Miami Vice-style rolled-up sleeves. It transpires that his outfit is in keeping with the evening's 80s theme, chosen to honour Bret Easton Ellis's new novel Imperial Bedrooms. With Ellis in town – he has earlier in the week appeared at the Festival Hall before a sell-out audience – all the whispers in the room are of whether he'll grace tonight's event with his presence.If, at around 10pm, Ellis did slip quietly into the basement of Concrete, a former industrial space reclaimed for the pleasure of the hedonistic twenty- and thirtysomethings who throng to London's Shoreditch on a nightly basis, he might not have immediately recognised the spectacle before him as a bookish sort of gathering. Literary Death Match was reaching its climax. In the couple of hours before, four writers – Milly McMahon, Clare Pollard, Lee Rourke and Nikesh Shukla – had read their work in strictly timed seven-minute segments, and found themselves the subject of an instant critique from a panel of judges. Among the highlights had been a somewhat painful account of a virginity long in the losing and, from Shukla's forthcoming novel Coconut Unlimited, which tells the story of a group of teenage Asian wannabe rappers in Harrow, the author's crowd-delighting version of Public Enemy's "Don't Believe the Hype". ... Fri, 30 Jul 2010 23:05:00 +0100 863524