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, 05 Aug 2011 02:52:20 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.2 http://epist.wordpress.com/2011/01/23/halfway-through-12-books-12-months/ Hurray! I have read 6 of my 12 Books 12 Months list.  And with this book I am fully appreciating the benefits of the 12 Books 12 Months idea because without it, I would most likely have gotten lost on reading tangents about sci-fi Jesuits, emotional food, and teenage demi-gods.  And I would completely forget about all these books that the Sara from 6 months ago wanted to read.  With the 12 Books list and the brilliant monthly summaries from E on latter day bohemian (I think those monthly round-ups really play an important role in motivation), I’ve managed to alternate between my whim readings and my planned readings – thus, moving ahead on some goals while also pursuing other spontaneous interests.  It’s a really good feeling. So even though I was very tempted to immediately jump into the sequel to the space traveling Jesuit story, I did myself a favor and picked up Haroun and the Sea of Stories.  I had heard about this book at the ALA Conference this past summer in D.C. when I had the great privilege of seeing Salman Rushdie at an author talk.  He was charming and intelligent, and his story about the beginnings of this book had me hooked. This is a children’s book with some obvious, but playful, political messages.  Rushdie wrote this just after the fatwa against his life was announced, wondering each day if he would see his son again, to whom the book is dedicated.  So we get greasy politicians, evil tyrants, and egotistical princes.  We also get some absolutely delightful bits — like the chapter headings: The Shah of Blah, An Iff and a Butt, and a wonderful nod to Beatles’ lyrics. My timing in reading this book was good and bad.  Bad – the pace and humor of a children’s book felt kind of jarring when I was in the middle of a stressful, high-stakes work week. ... Sun, 23 Jan 2011 20:57:09 +0100 895911 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/dec/31/new-year-reading Whether you want to improve yourself or simply get your brain going again after Hogmanay excess, it pays to choose the year's first book carefullyIf you're like me and tend to use literature as a kind of How-to guide to navigate life, then the book one chooses to read at the start of a New Year requires some careful consideration. Perhaps this book will be something worthy to get the brain working again after the excesses of the night before … Or an old favourite to welcome in the new year on a friendly, comforting note … Or perhaps something inspiring to set the tone for the upcoming 12 months and strengthen one's resolve to change and do better … Here then are just a few of the titles you might consider opening up on the first of January.Prick Up Your Ears: The Biography of Joe Orton by John LahrOK, so it doesn't end happily, but Orton's journey from abject failure to dizzying success is utterly inspiring and compellingly told. Lahr's admiration and enthusiasm for his subject is contagious, and if his critical dissections of Orton's work occasionally have the air of the study-note about them, there's always the sparkling wit of the diaries to turn to – or even the plays themselves. A one-off talent triumphing against overwhelming odds.The Memory Chalet by Tony JudtPublished earlier this year (sadly posthumously), historian Tony Judt's memoir was written under the most arduous of conditions: paralysed from a neurodegenerative disorder, Judt composed these warm and intelligent essays in his head during what must have been near-unbearable hours of insomnia and dictated them back the next day. The result is a remarkably positive, life-affirming read, and about as far away from the realms of "misery memoir" as one can get.Lucky Jim by Kingsley AmisAnd so to fiction. ... Fri, 31 Dec 2010 09:00:03 +0100 895783 http://santafelibrary.blogspot.com/2010/12/serious-information.html As you may know, it's the holidays. So we're feeling a little goofy, and you're probably not paying much attention anyway.We're sometimes a bit behind the times when it comes to frivolity—it's all those Shushing Seminars we attend—but here's a fun picture from last year:Don't get the joke? Check out this BoingBoing post.Happy New Year! (Source: ICARUS... the Santa Fe Public Library Blog) Fri, 31 Dec 2010 05:00:00 +0100 895768 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/29/mr-james-in-praise-of There are few who can hold a guttering candle to the marrow-chilling narratives of Montague Rhodes JamesPull up a chair. For now, the dark axis of the year, is traditionally the time for telling ghost stories and there are few who can hold a guttering candle to the marrow-chilling narratives of Montague Rhodes James. MR James had little time for benign spirits with sympathetic inclinations. His tales of the supernatural inhabit an altogether more sinister realm – of vengeful phantoms and, in one ingenious instance, a spectral room. Fittingly, given his association with King's College, Cambridge – first as a student, eventually as provost – James gave the first reading of his ghost stories at the Cambridge Chitchat Society in 1893. The story he chose – Canon Alberic's Scrapbook – trod the distinctive Jamesian path of a tale founded in historical fact and a glimpsed but never fully revealed horror lurking just out of sight. James's skilful hinting at fears buried in the awful unconscious is what makes his stories so compellingly unsettling. His talent at teasing the imagination is what makes even the most rational reader glance nervously beneath the bed at the conclusion of Oh Whistle and I'll Come to You. Occasionally, James's own fears surface – as in The Ash Tree, which could only have been written by an arachnophobe. The thread of sly humour that runs lightly through the best of his stories only further increases the sense of foreboding. So, pick up a copy of A Warning to the Curious, curl up by the fire and enter the clever and disturbing world of MR James. And that creaking door? Well, it's only the wind…guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds (Source: Guardian Unlimited Books) Wed, 29 Dec 2010 00:05:07 +0100 895382 http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2010/dec/28/last-nights-tv-miss-marple Miss Marple and her country-house set sleepwalk through an Agatha Christie travestyThe action had been brought forward from the mid-20s to the mid-50s. Most of the characters had been either renamed or invented. The plot had been largely reworked, with both motive and murderer entirely different. Even the detective was not the same, with Miss Marple being helicoptered in to solve a case in which she had never appeared. But apart from all this, Agatha Christie's Marple: The Secrets of Chimneys (ITV1) was a faithful interpretation of the original story.I know that country-house dramas are this year's big TV must-have and that the producers are running out of stories with which to keep the lucrative Marple franchise on the road, but quite why they felt the need to alter everything so dramatically wasn't clear. The original story – about the intrigues concerning the Herzoslovakian succession – was no more improbable than the one the scriptwriters dreamt up involving an Austrian count, a missing diamond and a secret passage.It's as if everyone involved with the series has lost confidence in the brand and reckons all the punters will stomach now is some whimsy Christie pastiche. The original Marple books weren't that demanding, but they had rather more bite than this.In Julia McKenzie, we have a Marple who gives few signs of consciousness. She sprang to life in the last 10 minutes to deliver the astonishing explanation that the gunshot was not a gunshot but a firework, and that the Marquis of Caterham had both hidden the diamond and accidentally killed the maid 23 years earlier while she was trying to stop him discovering that his wife, who was now dead, had been having an affair with a bloke in an orchestra who now turned out to be the Austrian count who was actually the real father of the marquis's daughter, Virginia. Phew. ... Tue, 28 Dec 2010 08:00:03 +0100 895315 http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2010/dec/27/matthew-warchus-matilda Matthew Warchus spent two years turning Matilda into a musical. So was it hard work? Not compared to Lord of the Rings, the director tells Maddy CostaFor many theatre directors, transforming Roald Dahl's 1988 novel Matilda into a musical might feel daunting. But Matthew Warchus appears to be taking it in his stride. There's no arrogance in his composure: it's simply the unexpected benefit of having spent four years heaving the behemoth that was the Lord of the Rings musical on to the stage. "It's made everything else feel straightforward – in a good way." Now that confidence has been justified with huge ticket sales and rave reviews. The production looks likely to transfer from Stratford to the West End next autumn.Warchus doesn't play down the challenges Matilda posed: how to convey the child's magic powers, for instance. He spent a large chunk of the show's two-year development period searching for a composer who could be "clever, scurrilous, a bit anarchic, funny, and make you cry" before settling on comedian Tim Minchin, and another chunk working with playwright Dennis Kelly to smooth Dahl's episodic story – portioned for bedtime reading – so that it doesn't end up "like a cabaret". But, compared with the "extreme" problems of The Lord of the Rings, Matilda was "quite manageable".The Lord of the Rings was no hit, despite a handful of positive reviews from critics who admired its "jaw-dropping theatrical brio". Audience numbers were so low that the Toronto and London productions closed before recouping their multimillion pound costs. Looking back, Warchus has no regrets. "It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity as a director to work on that scale with those resources. ... Mon, 27 Dec 2010 22:00:00 +0100 895220 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/27/british-library-cuts-public-private-investment The country needs more, not fewer, public spaces – yet the library service is facing vandalismThat well-known firebrand Adam Smith knew that private investors cannot always support institutions that are "in the highest degree advantageous to a great society". The state would have to step in, he thought, if "the profit could never repay the expense to any individual or small number of individuals".He could have been writing about the British Library. Founded by an act of Parliament in 1753 as part of the British Museum, the library provides an almost inestimable public benefit. Students and scholars from around the world can use its print and electronic archives to pursue research that would be impossibly expensive if left to the market. The projects pursued by obscure researchers include modern India (Mohandas Gandhi), modern Pakistan (Muhammad Ali Jinnah), modern American humour (Mark Twain), modern social democracy (Karl Marx) and modern revolutionary socialism (Marx again, and Vladimir Lenin). For those concerned about the library's more local contributions, the British Library also helped to invent modern British political writing (George Orwell) – and modernism, come to that (Virginia Woolf).Entrusted with this great global resource, the coalition has promptly cut its funding by 15% in real terms over four years. As a result, some 200 jobs are to go. A spokesman for the library tells me that staff numbers will fall through natural turnover, but it is not clear how many people will be leaving willingly in the current economic climate. And, again, though the chief executive, Lynne Brindley, has said that the library has been able "to avoid more radical cuts", she notes that the management will have to consider closing the library for one or more days a week or charging for reader's passes if the budget is reduced further. ... Mon, 27 Dec 2010 19:00:00 +0100 895222 http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/dec/27/what-happened-next-feminism-women A great year for women? Twelve months ago we predicted that it would be. Were we right?This time 12 months ago we promised it was going to be the biggest year in feminism ever. So was it? Er, sort of. We weren't wrong about it being a celebratory year. But our predictions of the feminist events to watch in 2010 were a bit hit and miss. Where did we strike gold? The significance of the movie Precious, the story of an overweight, illiterate teenager in 80s Harlem, pregnant by her abusive father ("primarily female cast", "a must-see", we said). Come the Oscars, the film won six nominations and two awards. What did we overestimate? The impact of Drew Barrymore's directorial debut Whip It! ("a great film"). That turned out to be a bit of a howler. The film went right under the radar, more's the pity.So what else did we get right? Well, it was always going to be a bumper year and maybe we could have even got a bit more excited about it. 2010 marked the 40th anniversary both of the publication of Germaine Greer's still controversial The Female Eunuch and of Kate Millett's landmark Sexual Politics. It was also four decades since the agenda-changing first ever National Women's Liberation conference. This killer combination of events galvanised campaigning groups everywhere and if anything our predictions of a feminist bonanza in 2010 underestimated the resurgence of grassroots activism.The first ever Feminism Summer School, hosted by UK Feminista in July, was a major success, picking up international coverage. And the Reclaim the Night movement was invigorated in force, with more than 2,000 women attending candlelit vigils in central London in November, where DJs kept the crowds going until 2am. Meanwhile more than 1,000 people attended London Feminism Network's October conference. ... Mon, 27 Dec 2010 08:00:17 +0100 895143 http://ricklibrarian.blogspot.com/2010/12/ricklibrarians-books-that-matter-and.html 2010 was a good book year for me. As I look back, November was especially stellar, as almost every book that I read for a few weeks was superb. It was difficult deciding which were best of the year, but I took a stab at it anyway. I also selected movies and music.In this post, I also include links to all my reporting from library conferences and to all my reviews of new reader's advisory sources.Have a Happy New Year for good reading and cultural experiences.Recent NonfictionClaiming Ground by Laura BellDangerously Funny: The Uncensored Story of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour by David BianculliThe Grace of Silence: A Memoir by Michele NorrisI Am Nujood, Age Ten and Divorced by Nujood Ali and Delphine MinouiThe Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca SklootLife List: A Woman's Quest for the World's Most Amazing Birds by Olivia GentileLighting Out for the Territory: How Samuel Clemens Headed West and Became Mark Twain by Roy Morris, Jr.Mark Twain: The Man in White: The Grand Adventure of His Final Years by Michael SheldenA Mighty Long Way: My Journey to Justice at Little Rock Central High School by Carlotta Walls LaNierNine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India by William DalrymplePacking for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void by Mary RoachZeitoun by Dave EggersRecent FictionCorduroy Mansions by Alexander McCall SmithThe Man from Beijing by Henning MankellThe Tower, the Zoo, and the Tortoise by Julia StuartGreat Old BooksFirst Person Rural: Essays of a Sometime Farmer by Noel PerrinIn Patagonia by Bruce ChatwinRoseanna by Maj Sjöwall and Per WahlööChildren's BooksAn Egret's Day by Jane YolenFace to Face with Elephants by Beverly JoubertMarching for Freedom: Walk Together, Children, and Don't You Grow Weary by Elizabeth PartridgeSaving the Ghost of the Mountain by Sy MontgomeryZen Shorts by Jon J. Muth and Zen Ties by Jon J. ... Mon, 27 Dec 2010 05:00:00 +0100 895302 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/dec/27/breaking-trust-over-book-fund As a children's author and mother I was dismayed to learn of the Department for Education's decision to cut all funding to the Booktrust bookgifting programmes in England (In praise of… Booktrust, 23 December). Booktrust has introduced thousands of children to the pleasures and benefits of reading. I have friends who'd never have thought to read with their children were it not for Booktrust. I've met families in our local library who, by their own admission, would never have become regular visitors without Booktrust's initial prompt. Now, libraries aren't exactly high on the government's agenda either – so what exactly are they doing to give ensure that every child has access to books?Bookgifting is one of those rare government-funded schemes that actually works. Booktrust doesn't just give children books; it gives them the power to imagine. It also gives families an enjoyable way to interact – a welcome alternative to toys and television.When busy parents forget storytime, it is understandable. When the government forgets it, it is unforgivable. I can only hope that the funding cut-off date of next April Fools' Day is Michael Gove's idea of a bad joke.Michelle RobinsonBristol• The fact that the government has cut off funding to the Booktrust bookgifting schemes is not only outrageous but will directly affect the viability of early years reading and learning in both children's centres and libraries. It is not simply about giving a load of money to a charity to dole out books. It has been since 1999 a way of libraries, primary care trusts and early educators working together at a local level and parents being empowered with high-quality resources, whether books, library joining incentives, regular visit incentives or giving the chance for health visitors to talk about the importance of literacy alongside health advice. Half of the gift is the message that goes with it. ... Mon, 27 Dec 2010 00:05:03 +0100 895144 http://www.librarymonk.com/2010/12/from-dan-on-twitter-this-week-85/ well delicious isn't quite dead yet, mostly dead? undead? what's the best term here? # Now I'm thirsty… http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/16/amazon-provides-a-dose-of-humor # My Blackberry Is Not Working! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAG39jKi0lI # CIA? WTF? http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/22/cia-wikileaks-taskforce-wtf # Powered by Twitter Tools (Source: Library Monk - the blog of Dan Greene) Sun, 26 Dec 2010 16:16:00 +0100 895627 http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/dec/26/gullivers-travels-jack-black-letterman I was six when first I came across Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels in the form of the 1939 animated movie by the Fleischer brothers. It was the first full-length cartoon by Disney's only rivals at that time, and I remember enjoying it. The film took in just the journeys to Lilliput and Brobdingnag, and a decade passed before I discovered that Gulliver's Travels was a great work of satire that had fallen into the hands of children, and despite being written by a distinguished clergyman it contained much that was considered unfit for the young.I've since seen a number of adaptations, but only one of real worth: the version Sean Kenny, who died tragically young in 1973 aged 40, co-wrote, co-directed and designed at Bernard Miles's Mermaid theatre. It was a remarkable imaginative and intellectual achievement, taking in all four books (so kids got to hear about Laputa, Glubbdubdrib, the Houyhnhnms and the Yahoos, as well as Lilliput) and including a sea sequence shot in a pond on Hampstead Heath. Mike d'Abo, the Cambridge-educated pop star, played Gulliver, and I think the show might have been called Gulliver Travels. Less celebrated than the original Oliver! or his sets for Theatre Workshop and the National, Kenny's Gulliver is a memory I cherish of a great artist of whom Ken Tynan once said: "I have a fearful premonition of the next show Mr Kenny designs. As soon as the curtain rises, the sets will advance in a phalanx on the audience and summarily expel it from the theatre."In Rob Letterman's truly dire 3-D version of Gulliver's Travels, Lemuel Gulliver has been demoted from 18th-century ship's surgeon to 21st-century clerk. Stuck for a decade in the mailroom of the New York Herald, he's played by that all-purpose slob and loser, Jack Black. ... Sun, 26 Dec 2010 00:05:20 +0100 894997 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/dec/26/kate-horsley-fancy-dress William has everything he ever wanted. Sophie, lying beside him, is expecting their first child. She is perfect, it is Christmas, so why does he feel so awful? An exclusive short story by Kate HorsleyWilliam woke up earlier than he would have liked. It was the morning of Christmas Day, but it was still dark outside. He thought about trying to go back to sleep, but even though he felt tired, he knew he wouldn't be able to. He got out of bed and walked over to the window. The blind had been lowered and he edged his body between the material and the glass. He looked down at the road running adjacent to the house. The streetlamps were still lit; grey parking meters stood at intervals along the pavement. The families in the row of houses opposite didn't appear to be up: the windows were dark and each building gave the impression of great stillness. He could hear some wind in the trees, but apart from that it was very quiet, as though there'd been a large fall of snow. He walked back over to the bed and he sat down on the nearest corner. Sophie had always been a good sleeper; she could sleep anywhere – in the back of a car, curled up on a sofa at a party. Since she'd become pregnant, she'd started having lie-ins too. Over the last few months William had grown more sensitive to his wife's habits because he'd been having trouble sleeping himself. It was a similar pattern every night. He'd go to sleep for a few hours and then he'd wake up, very suddenly. Sometimes he was still awake at six or seven the following morning. It all felt quite out of character. William liked to think of himself as a steady sort of man, the type of person who didn't let things get the better of him. He hadn't mentioned what had been happening to anyone – he didn't want to worry Sophie – until a few nights ago when he'd had a conversation with his brother on the phone. John had said something about it being a difficult time of year. ... Sun, 26 Dec 2010 00:05:12 +0100 894999 http://www.slaw.ca/2010/12/24/christmas-in-1594/ The law student of 1594 passed Christmas revelling to The Comedy of Errors by Shakespeare. We know this because of the Gesta Grayorum which was printed in 1688 from a much older manuscript. This text has been conveniently reproduced with an introduction on the Mr. Shakespeare blog. We can also look forward to a 3 volume set, part of the Records of Early English Drama series, to be published in January 2011 by Boydell & Brewer: Inns of Court, edited by Alan H. Nelson and John R. Elliott, Jr. According to the publisher’s blurb: The Introduction provides a survey of Christmas entertainment supervised by Inns of Court Masters of the Revels and Christmas Princes, including minstrels, a lion-tamer, musicians, disguisings, plays, masques, and even a puppet-show. The illustrations (ground-plans and plates) offer evidence of the original performance conditions for Inns of Court plays and masques. The appendices will reproduce a number of relevant documents. A brief account of the Grand Christmases celebrated at the Inns of Court can be found in Anton-Hermann Chroust, in "The Beginning, Flourishing and Decline of the Inns of Court: The Consolidation of the English Legal Profession after 1400" (1956) 10 Vand. L. Rev. 79-123 (Hein), at 102-3: The fact that the Inns of Court were also schools of manners should explain the original meaning and functions of those periodic entertainments "which are called revels," and which for a long time played an important role in the lives of the Inns. These pastimes apparently were encouraged by the Benchers who believed that such activities would greatly improve the literary tastes and the social manners of the students.²⁸ Revels and masques were usually held at Christmas time or some other feast day, and the King as well as the Queen attended them regularly. ... Fri, 24 Dec 2010 16:39:19 +0100 895179 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/dec/24/season-s-readings-readers-favourite As part of our seasonal series, we asked you to nominate your favourite Yuletide reads, and this is the books blog's Christmas top of the popsAs part of our Season's Reading series, we asked you to nominate your favourite Christmassy reads. Here's the 2010 Christmas reading list, compiled by you.Christmas verse was popular with many of you, with "A Child's Christmas in Wales", Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and "The Night Before Christmas" all receiving mentions. PMakar explained why her vote went to Dylan Thomas: "'A Child's Christmas in Wales' is my favorite. No preaching; no sentimentality. But real feeling, wonderful humor, and beautiful language."As with the Books desk's choice of favourite Christmas tales, children's books dominated the nominations. natalie1 and galfriday nominated Dodie Smith's The Hundred and One Dalmations, while Rachelthedigger, seconded by Garkpit, suggested JRR Tolkein's Letters from Father Christmas. Many of you agreed with Sarah Crown and chose the The Dark is Rising, Ianmark declaring it "perfect from first word to last. Not just one of the best Christmas books, but one of the finest novels ever written for children." But, it was John Masefield's The Box of Delights with seven nominations, and Dickens's A Christmas Carol with eight, that proved the most popular festive tales. As Dowland says: "A Christmas Carol. Much imitated. Never bettered (except by the Muppets...)."In no particular order, here are some of the most voted for Christmassy reads:A Christmas Carol by Charles DickensThe Box of Delights by John MasefieldThe Dark is Rising by Susan CooperChildren of Green Knowe by Lucy M. BostonLetters from Father Christmas by JRR TolkienA Child's Christmas in Wales by Dylan ThomasThe Gift of the Magi by O. ... Fri, 24 Dec 2010 15:26:07 +0100 894799 http://www.slaw.ca/2010/12/24/the-friday-fillip-229/ Think of it as a stocking. (How did socks become stockings — and not sockings, eh? Blame belongs to the Old English, it seems, whoever they were.) Yes, a Christmas stocking just crammed with little goodies, the sort of things to keep you occupied while the rest of us sleep in for just a little bit longer, which is what we’ll be doing here at Slaw for the next little while, I imagine. (The Christmas stocking thing didn’t begin as a distraction, it turns out, but rather as boots with gifts for Odin’s flying horse, Sleipnir; Odin would be so gratified, he’d replace the straw with sweets or toys.) I’m referring to QI. Which stands for Quite Interesting. Which, by turns, is a British TV show, a book, a website and a blog. And like a Christmas stocking, QI is crammed with little gems (or lumps of coal) that you’d likely not find anywhere else. The TV show is a BBC quiz/comedy show, MC’d by none other than the ubiquitous Stephen Fry and “panelled” with a quartet of funny folks. You can’t get it here, but you can watch dozens and dozens of snippets on YouTube. Fry tries to ask questions about trivia and the contestants ad lib. Now, I was raised on a diet of The Goons, Beyond the Fringe, and Monty Python, so I have that peculiarly British sense of humour that leaves the Germans baffled and Americans thinking they’re missing something important. If you’ve not been similarly warped, QI as a quiz might not appeal to you. But that’s okay. Because there’s the website — which is filled to overflowing with quite interesting facts. (For example, on the site today is the startling revelation that General Franco owned an arm of St. Theresa of Avila and kept it with him his whole life; he died clutching it. ... Fri, 24 Dec 2010 14:00:18 +0100 895180 http://itinerantlibrarian.blogspot.com/2010/12/holiday-post-2010-readers-edition.html We continue our series of posts for the holiday season here at The Itinerant Librarian. As a librarian and avid reader, I feel it is essential to make an end-of-year post about reading and books. I will be posting my end-of-year reading list and commentary right after the end of 2010. I am trying to squeeze in one or two books more to the tally before the year ends. So, here we go: Book lists: The Usual SuspectsThe New Yorker's Book Department has a "Holiday Gift Guide 2010." It also includes reading paraphernalia and accessories, but there are some interesting books too. The New York Times Book Review has its "100 Notable Books of 2010."  The Guardian has its "Best Books of 2010" list.  The Economist also has a 2010 Best Books list. You can find fiction and nonfiction here. The Financial Times has its "Fiction Round-up." Bob Sutton's Good Boss, Bad Boss book was featured in various business book lists. I am linking to the post because it includes links to various business book lists. Largehearted Boy has a large aggregation of book lists from the usual suspects (Amazon, NYT, etc.) as well as some less known lists. This is basically "one-stop shopping" for book lists. More Book Lists: Things not as easy to find but just as coolFor manga readers, and I happen to be one of them, here is The Manga Critic's 2010 Holiday Gift Guide.  The author also rounded up "The Best Manga of 2010." Via The Manga Critic. Lambda Literary has book lists for LGBT readers (and by this I mean not only LGBT folks, but those of us who enjoy LGBT literature as well). Their 2010 guide features "75+ Books for every LGBTQA Person in Your Life." They even have a list for comics and graphic novel readers. There is a lot of stuff in here that I want to read at some point. The folks at Guys Lit Wire discuss "Graphic Novels-- notes from a Top 10 List. ... Fri, 24 Dec 2010 05:00:00 +0100 895485 http://itinerantlibrarian.blogspot.com/2010/12/holiday-post-2010-stuff-and-things.html Another popular thing to see this time of year are shopping guides and gift suggestions. Now, anyone can point to some big corporate site to get the usual. I am thinking a few more interesting things. By the way, if you have not done all your shopping, what are you waiting for? You should be done by now. You should definitely be done by now if you bought stuff online. However, if you need some real last minute ideas, or you just want some holiday amusement, stay a while and check some of these out. Spirits: Mostly alcoholicLiquor Snob has put together their "Holiday Shopping Guide 2010." So does Drinkhacker over here. Intoxicated Zodiac points to some interesting items you could have put on the grown-ups stockings: whisky dram samples. You can get them some from Master of Malt. If I had a wish list, I would not mind getting those on my stocking. Stuff for the geek in your life Blag Hag points to these nice Plush Microbe Holiday Ornaments. Topless Robot has "20 Delightfully Offbeat Nerd Gifts Under $20." Mashable listed "10 Customizable Holiday Gifts for Your Tech Savvy Office." Now do you have a geek in your life? Are they very particular, say Star Wars fan or Doctor Who? Not to worry for here is a list of "Gift Ideas for Ten Major Species of Science Fiction Fan."  Via Io9. A few naughty things (some may be a bit NSFW). The only reason I am putting this under the naughty column is because of the Boink guided journal. As the company describes it, "Commit to having sex for 30 days in a row? And write about each experience in its glorious detail? That’s what Boink is about." I thought it was a nice and unique item. The company is Flytrap. Hat tip to Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. Em & Lo have some suggestions for "Sensual Holiday Gifts for That Special Someone." The sex manual parody on the list sounds amusing, just the type of thing I would like to read. ... Fri, 24 Dec 2010 05:00:00 +0100 895484 http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/dec/23/gullivers-travels-review Jack Black stars in a defanged version of Jonathan Swift's 18th-century satire. By Peter BradshawTo make a faithful version of Swift's 18th-century satirical fantasy Gulliver's Travels, you'd probably need to get Tim Burton to team up with Ken Loach. Or maybe get Michael Winterbottom to make something with the witty, freewheeling, questing spirit of his Tristram Shandy film A Cock and Bull Story. As it happens, this moderate new Hollywood version is directed by Rob Letterman, whose previous credits include Shark Tale and Monsters Vs Aliens and co-scripted by Shrek writer Joe Stillman. As is traditional with Gulliver adaptations, the third and fourth sections of the book are entirely missed out – that is, the sections with the Struldbrugs, the Yahoos and Houyhnhnms – and all we get is the first two tales, in which Gulliver first visits Lilliput, where everyone is very small, and then (briefly) Brobdingnag, where they are very big. Jack Black plays Lemuel Gulliver, a nerdy present-day loser in the mail-room of a fancy magazine, secretly in love with the travel editor, Darcy, played by Amanda Peet. He bluffs his way into a travel assignment in the Bermuda Triangle, where he finds himself in the land of the little people, where everyone is either a British actor (Emily Blunt, James Corden) or speaks with a British accent (Jason Segel). It isn't too bad: there is one funny sequence in which Gulliver puts on a theatre show for the benefit of his minuscule new friends, purporting to be scenes from his own remarkable life, which are all horribly plagiarised from movies like Star Wars and Titanic. But as so often, this diluted Gulliver's Travels is presented as if it were a children's story, clearly influenced by similarly defanged versions of Alice In Wonderland. Actually it is a very different, fiercer beast. A grown-up Gulliver is what we need.Released on Boxing Day.Rating: 2/5ComedyAction and adventureJonathan SwiftPeter Bradshawguardian.co. ... Thu, 23 Dec 2010 22:36:00 +0100 894727 http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2010/dec/23/green-hornet-kick-ass Michel Gondry's superhero might be creating a buzz, but haven't we heard this 'ordinary guy decides to fight crime' shtick before?It might not have performed well at the US box office, supposedly the ultimate arbiter of future big budget movie-making, but Matthew Vaughn's Kick-Ass has certainly made a profound and lasting impact on the world of comic-book films. Perhaps it's a little like the old adage about the Velvet Underground's first album (albeit on a rather larger scale), that each of the 1,000 or so people who bought it went out and formed a band. Or perhaps Hollywood is aware of quite how many people illegally downloaded a copy of the film.In any case, I doubt that films such as Michel Gondry's forthcoming The Green Hornet, which arrives in the UK and US on 14 January, would have looked quite the same before Hit Girl and Big Daddy's big-screen debut. Kick-Ass seems to have created a "third way" for the genre that eschews both high camp and "dark and serious" approaches in favour of a postmodern take, allowing the audience to laugh at various genre tropes. In a sense, it's the superhero film's answer to Wes Craven's Scream, which poked fun at horror sensibilities yet remained a pretty scary movie in its own right.But back to The Green Hornet, which is looking increasingly like the heir to Kick-Ass. A new featurette for the film (below), which stars Seth Rogen as publishing-heir-turned-crimefighter Britt Reid, and Jay Chou as Kato, pitches the project as a different kind of superhero movie in which the protagonist is just an average guy who decides to take up a career fighting crime. Sound familiar?"We knew that me as a superhero is not something that people would expect," says Rogen. "So to start with something that people could totally see me as, which is a moron that drinks all day, and slowly turn that guy into a superhero, became something that was interesting. ... Thu, 23 Dec 2010 14:24:11 +0100 894610 http://www.slaw.ca/2010/12/23/morris-cohen-1927-2010-a-few-thoughts/ Morris Leo Cohen died on Saturday, December 18, 2010. He had recently celebrated his 83rd birthday. More than a few of us call Morris mentor. During his years at Yale, Harvard, Penn and SUNY Buffalo, he attracted disciples with ease and grace. I trust that a round of tributes will follow his passing, but one aspect that may be neglected is the symbolic value of it for librarianship. Morris was the last great scholar bibliographer of his generation in American law librarianship. Not a scholar who stepped into the role of librarian, Morris was a scholarly bibliographer, a man of great learning, who could quote both Samuel Johnson and Ranganathan in the same sentence. Even more important, he was devoted to bibliographic integrity. While a hardy handful of American law librarians continue to pursue lines of scholarly interest, Morris stands for old-style, careful, bibliographic work. His work showed analytical depth combined with elegant style. It was an endeavor that called for intellectual focus and pure sweat equity. When I first met Morris in 1972, I was a second year law student at Harvard Law School. Sharon Hamby O’Connor, who had been my boss at the undergraduate library, suggested that I meet with him to discuss my very foggy career plans. (Sharon went on to become Law Librarian, Professor and Associate Dean at Boston College Law School, yet another of Morris’s mentees). Inspirational in every possible way, Morris told me to be a law librarian. Looking at him, at his work, and entranced, as so many were, by his sweet manner, he changed my life. I recall that on that day he told me of BEAL, his projected Bibliography of Early American Law. It was an ambitious project, conceived of with Balfour Halevy, that ultimately was designed to prepare a catalog that listed each and every legal imprint in the United States published before 1860. Ideally, Morris would look at each book in person. ... Thu, 23 Dec 2010 12:00:01 +0100 895185 http://itinerantlibrarian.blogspot.com/2010/12/holiday-post-2010-basics.html We have almost made it to the end of 2010, and we have made it to the holiday season. Whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, the Winter Solstice, Festivus, or some other holiday (or you just enjoy having time off at this time of year), may you have a peaceful and safe time. As I have done in previous years (here is the one from last year if interested), here is my small gift to my three readers where I go around and collect interesting, amusing, or just miscellaneous things that may be of interest this holiday season.Once again, I have enough for a series of posts. So, we will start today with The Basics. I will also make a post for readers and another one for humor and lists. So, stay tuned this week.  The BasicsOne of my favorite links this season is NORAD's Santa Tracker. For years now, we enjoy keeping track of Santa as he makes his way around the world. This never fails to make me smile. Apparently, they now even offer options to track Santa on your mobile phone (please, just don't do it while you are driving). I can always count on the U.S. Census Bureau to put together a set of facts and figures about the holiday season. Here is their 2010 Holiday Season fact sheet. And wow, PNC Financial Services is still doing their annual calculation of the Christmas Price Index. This year marks their 27th year doing it, and I always find it very entertaining. Here is the 2010 edition. Small note: the site does have an auto-play this year, so you may want to adjust volume accordingly. It does have a very interactive element I think kids will enjoy (as well as kids at heart). You want to be safe this holiday season. From GovGab, here are some fire safety tips for your home. GovGab also offers some tips and advice on "Drinking and Driving During the Holidays." The idea here is to be safe and responsible when you drink during the holidays. A drink here and there is a very traditional thing to do (if you choose to consume alcohol. ... Thu, 23 Dec 2010 05:00:00 +0100 895486 http://www.madisonpubliclibrary.org/madreads/index.php/2010/12/22/separated-at-birth/ Planning a plane trip or a leisurely vacation anytime soon?  Perhaps you’re traveling for the holidays?  If so then Cutting For Stone by Abraham Verghese should be in your carry-on.  The novel starts a bit slowly, but stick with it, soon it becomes a page turner.  It begins with the birth of twin boys in a mission hospital (forever known as Missing) in  Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.  Their Catholic nun mother dies in childbirth and their father, the reclusive Doctor Stone, deserts them immediately.  The children are raised separately by the two remaining expatriate Indian doctors in the mission, the obstetrician Hema, who saved the twins lives at their birth, and Ghosh, the congenial role model and devoted father. The twins, Marion and Shiva Stone, who were separated at birth are in many ways mirror images of each other.  Through Marion’s narration, we see the unfolding of events in Ethopia during the reign of Haile Selaisse and its aftermath.  Both boys become doctors and although there is considerable medical detail, it is all very comprehensible.  Marion’s experience as a resident in an urban hospital is described, as is Shiva’s medical research.  And the elusive Doctor Stone also has a role to play. This is an epic novel, covering a good part of the life of a young man who is eventually forced by politics to emigrate to America.  It has all of the elements of a good novel: well developed characters,  humor, tragegy, romance, and a historical perspective.  Verghese writes well and  quickly draws the reader into a part of the world that is very unfamilar to most Americans.  Although the length of the book might discourage a book group, it is would be a great choice for a discussion. (Source: MADreads) Thu, 23 Dec 2010 00:25:22 +0100 894523 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/dec/22/jesus-buddha-japan-manga-novel A new manga novel lightheartedly depicting the two as everyday young men may inadvertently raise interest in religion in JapanWhat would Jesus and Buddha do if they were suddenly thrust into contemporary society, and how would they react to what they found?Japanese author-illustrator Nakamura Hikaru has sketched an answer to this provocative question in a very popular manga, or illustrated serial novel, entitled Saint Young Men (Seinto oniisan).Nakamura (her surname) depicts the adventures of the two religious founders as they room together in Tachikawa (a suburb west of Tokyo) while vacationing in Japan.Humour, rather than veneration, sets the tone for the series, which is replete with visual gags and puns. For example, when the roommates discover that the prizes they have won at a shrine festival are cheap imitations of coveted handheld videogames, Nakamura quips: "The two were enlightened as to the true flavour of Japanese festivals," playing on a double sense of the word daigomi, which can either mean sublime Buddhist teaching or – more colloquially – the "true charm" of something.Similarly, quirky interactions that juxtapose episodes from Jesus' ministry with hilarious social faux pas provide opportunities to chuckle. When Jesus says that he "just wants to wash his [disciples'] feet," a local gangster who overhears him misinterprets this phrase in its figurative sense as an indication of one's desire to start afresh after a life of crime. Jesus, oblivious to this misunderstanding, unwittingly gains notoriety among the mob as a particularly tough villain.Nakamura's protagonists, though saintly, are hardly infallible. Jesus' all-encompassing love makes him excessively enthusiastic (Nakamura portrays him as a compulsive shopaholic), while Buddha's ascetic tendencies make him seem – as the back of one volume states – like "the parsimonious lady next door". ... Wed, 22 Dec 2010 10:00:00 +0100 894378 http://blog.case.edu/bcg8/2010/12/22/books_for_christmas For all my library friends, have a nice holidays. (Source: e3 Information Overload, E-Resources for Engineering Education) Wed, 22 Dec 2010 05:00:00 +0100 894486 http://gypsylibrarian.blogspot.com/2010/12/webinar-notes-on-new-tech-training.html Webinar provided by WebJunction. Topic title: New Technology Training Materials (link to archived presentation and materials here).Event date: December 14, 2010.  My notes:What makes an accidental tech trainer? Some features:You teach in a computer lab. You provide webinars. You help patrons with things like e-mail or finding articles online. If you work in a library, odds are good you are already doing technology training. Factoid presented: 5,400 public libraries in the U.S. offer free technology classes. 4,000 businesses offer computer training (for a fee). With close to 15,000 people taking free library classes, that is about $629 million dollars in retail value of the courses.  It is important to have a good attitude as a trainer. This is also helpful to the participants, projecting confidence and being positive.In teaching, keep in mind that people take in the world in different ways. Three basic styles of learning (this is something that is simple and easy to remember): visual, auditory, kinesthetic. As a trainer, try to incorporate styles as much as possible.To motivate, provide examples of what users could use the new technology/material for. You can have sample products made with the new technology. Do give the audience some "time to play" (hands-on).The times when the technology fails, show what happened (if possible, such as if you opened a wrong window. Obviously, you lose power or the Internet, that is a different issue. Personally, I recommend using some humor at that point). Think in terms of creating a learning community with the workshop. Start with simple things, let class members share names and what they wish to learn from the workshop. Again, provide hands-on time. Also, providing some time for reflection is important. (Source: The Gypsy Librarian) Tue, 21 Dec 2010 21:23:00 +0100 895033 http://www.readersclub.org/reviews/tresults.asp?id=7768 by Eubanks, GeorgannDid you know that humor writer David Sedaris once washed dishes at the Carolina Coffee Shop on East Franklin Street in Chapel Hill? Or that the movie version of Alice Walker’s The Color Purple was filmed on location in several areas in and around Marshville and Wadesboro? And that Pulitzer winner John Hersey was married at the Duke Mansion in Charlotte? These are just a few fascinating facts found in this unique literary guide which explores the many locales in North Carolina’s Piedmont area which have inspired writers, both North Carolina native authors as well as visiting authors from other states and countries. The guide includes detailed descriptions of locations and maps as well as photographs that drivers, walkers and armchair travelers will appreciate.- reviewed by Kim, University City Regional, PLCMC (Source: Reader's Club's Latest) Tue, 21 Dec 2010 18:55:04 +0100 894251 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/kkJF/~3/UGVr4GgjMkk/twittertypes.html Als je veel twittert is er eigenlijk geen gedrag waar je jezelf niet schuldig aan maakt. Dat is niets om moeilijk over te doen, want die vrijheid maakt het platform juist interessant. Dat neemt niet weg dat je nooit moet stoppen met het jezelf in de maling te nemen. Grinniken maar. @ Via Twittermania (Source: Digitaal Inlichtingenwerk Zeeuwse Bibliotheek) Tue, 21 Dec 2010 17:36:00 +0100 894303 http://blog.booklistonline.com/2010/12/21/literary-spin-offs-a-christmas-carol/ Okay, so you’ve seen, and this is just a conservative estimate, 1,489,226 television shows and movies based — sometimes exceedingly loosely — on Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol (1843). But how many literary spin-offs have you read? Adam Roberts, the British science fiction writer and parodist — I talked about him back in March, in this post – has written I Am Scrooge (Gollancz, 2010), a very funny retelling of Dickens’ classic story, with one tiny, almost insignificant addition: zombies. Scrooge, you see, is somehow immune to the plague that’s turning the rest of humanity into the walking dead, and the ghosts of Christmases past, present, and future are really keen to find out why. If you’re a fan of Roberts’ brand of humor (and I am, very much), you’ll love this Yuletide mashup. If you’ve never come across his hysterical parodies — or, for that matter, his elegantly written science fiction novels — you’re in for a real treat. And, needless to say, zombie-philes will eat it up. Louis Bayard’s Mr. Timothy (HarperCollins, 2003) focuses on the grown-up Tiny Tim, who, with a young companion, exposes the dark side of London’s elite. Timothy Cratchit undergoes a transition that echoes that of his benefactor Ebenezer Scrooge — he’s a hard-edged cynic when the story begins — but the novel isn’t precisely a sequel to A Christmas carol. In fact the book feels a bit unsure of itself at times (is it an examination of its central character? is it a crime drama?), but you can’t deny that it’s well written and pretty darned interesting.  You should also check out The Man Who Invented Christmas (Crown, 2008), by Les Standiford – yes, that Standiford, the author of the John Deal mystery novels. ... Tue, 21 Dec 2010 10:38:44 +0100 894482 http://gypsylibrarian.blogspot.com/2010/12/webinar-notes-on-new-tech-training.html Webinar provided by WebJunction. Topic title: New Technology Training Materials (link to archived presentation and materials here).Event date: December 14, 2010.  My notes:What makes an accidental tech trainer? Some features:You teach in a computer lab. You provide webinars. You help patrons with things like e-mail or finding articles online. If you work in a library, odds are good you are already doing technology training. Factoid presented: 5,400 public libraries in the U.S. offer free technology classes. 4,000 businesses offer computer training (for a fee). With close to 15,000 people taking free library classes, that is about $629 million dollars in retail value of the courses.  It is important to have a good attitude as a trainer. This is also helpful to the participants, projecting confidence and being positive.In teaching, keep in mind that people take in the world in different ways. Three basic styles of learning (this is something that is simple and easy to remember): visual, auditory, kinesthetic. As a trainer, try to incorporate styles as much as possible.To motivate, provide examples of what users could use the new technology/material for. You can have sample products made with the new technology. Do give the audience some "time to play" (hands-on).The times when the technology fails, show what happened (if possible, such as if you opened a wrong window. Obviously, you lose power or the Internet, that is a different issue. Personally, I recommend using some humor at that point). Think in terms of creating a learning community with the workshop. Start with simple things, let class members share names and what they wish to learn from the workshop. Again, provide hands-on time. Also, providing some time for reflection is important. (Source: The Gypsy Librarian) Tue, 21 Dec 2010 05:00:00 +0100 895034 http://mcpldteens.blogspot.com/2010/12/reviews.html Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (DVD, 2010)Two words...crazy awesome! This movie is based on the graphic novel series by Bryan O'Malley, and from what I hear, the movie follows the GN really well, so fans of the series won't be disappointed. The story (both movie and GN) is about an aimless 22 year old, Scott Pilgrim, who plays the bass in a band, dates a high schooler (which I believe is illegal), and is currently unemployed. Everything changes for Scott when he meets the girl of his dreams, Ramona Flowers (although, not the jobless part). There is a catch to this relationship, he must defeat her seven evil exes before they can be together. This movie has action, comedy, and romance. Definitely look Scott Pilgrim on the teen shelves.Gothic Beauty (Magazine)Recently this magazine came to my attention, being new to the shelf, and it is wicked cool. I don't even think you need to be gothic to enjoy it. Some of the articles found in the most recent issue deal with steam-punk fashion, insane assylms, timeless trends, DYI (do-it-yourself) coffin purses, and heritage museums. I really like how it mixes history with fashion. Of course, Gothic Beauty also contains music, book, and product reviews that are related to gothic culture. Look for issues of this magazine in the teen section at the Central Branch.Shanna~Teen Librarian (Source: Teen Stuff @ Mesa County Libraries) Tue, 21 Dec 2010 05:00:00 +0100 894761 http://keptup.typepad.com/academic/2010/12/these-faculty-think-stand-up-comedy-is-the-way-to-reach-the-public.html Three professors walk into a pub. That’s not the setup for a joke, but an average evening out for Steve Cross, a former geneticist who is completely serious in his crusade to find new ways for academics to interact with the public. What prompts tenured academics to risk their dignity in a setting so far removed from the safety of the classroom? “You can’t really let yourself go in a lecture,” said Dr. Roberts, who was recruited for Bright Club after the organizers saw a YouTube video. Read more at: (Source: The Kept-Up Academic Librarian) Tue, 21 Dec 2010 05:00:00 +0100 894163 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/literaturwelt/~3/G191iaBwN1g/ Zweimal südwärts mit sechzig Jahren Abstand Vielleicht liest sich der originelle und erheiternde Roman des jungen Schweizers Andri Perl gerade im tiefen Winter besonders genüsslich. Mir jedenfalls hat er so viel Vergnügen gemacht, dass ich ihm gern zu einer Besprechung in SWR 2 “Forum Buch” verholfen habe. Dort heißt es: “Seine Poesie ist heutig wie seine Erfahrungen als Rapper. Schon in den ersten Sätzen spielt er mit Rhythmen, Schleifen und Wiederholungen, er erzeugt durch Bildwechsel und Rückblenden ein veritables Kino im Kopf. Andri Perl erfreut den Leser mit Sinn für Sprache, Beobachtungsgabe und Lust am Spiel mit Worten. Und wenn sich ‘romantischer Aufbruch nach Italien infolge unglücklicher Liebe’ wie eine prima Vorlage für Süßliches anhört, so vermeidet Perl mit Humor und für seine Jugend erstaunlicher Stilsicherheit jeglichen Kitsch – gerade bei der leidvollen Romanze.” Andri Perl ist als Rapper mit seiner Band “Breitbild” in der Schweiz bekannt, er studiert Germanistik, zählt Gottfried Keller zu seinen literarischen Vorbildern, weil er ihn für einen subtilen Erotiker hält. Darin folgt ihm Andri Perl auf erfreuliche Art. “Die fünfte, letzte und wichtigste Reiseregel Roman in zwölf Kapiteln, dazu ein Ende” ist im Salis Verlag erschienen und kostet 19,90 €. (Source: Literaturwelt. Das Blog.) Mon, 20 Dec 2010 22:51:00 +0100 895211 http://www.teleread.com/paul-biba/cartoon-modern-toss-now-available-as-an-iphoneipad-app/ From the press release: Fans of cult cartoonists Modern Toss can now get a full four seasons’ classic cartoons on their iPhone, iPod touch or iPad. Brighton-based Jon Link and Mick Bunnage, the creative brains behind Modern Toss, have teamed up with publishing app developers Aimer Media, also based in Brighton, to produce the new download. The app is available in the iTunes store for £1.19/$1.99 as an introductory offer and includes Modern Toss fans’ favourites including Space Argument, Cheese & Wine, Mr Tourette and Home Clubber. Have a scroll through, or whack on the randomizer to see what it serves up. Get a sneak preview at YouTube. Toss creators Jon and Mick said: “Sign up to the new Daily Toss app and each morning you’ll get a fresh Modern Toss cartoon pumped straight into your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad without having to do anything except wake up and press a button. You can share the cartoons on Facebook, Twitter and email. Get signed up now for a piping hot stream of demented jokes squirted in your face every morning. There’s no better way to start the day.” (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Mon, 20 Dec 2010 17:24:19 +0100 894068 http://kairosnews.org/dr-hairy-in-frank-talking-part-3 The seventh in a series of 10-minute videos about the adventures and frustrations of an ordinary (but rather hirsute) General Practitioner. In this one, Dr Underslider manages to persuade Mrs Hattersley to forgive Dr Hairy for his straight talking - with hilarious results! To view it on my site, go to http://www.edwardpicot.com/drhairy/franktalking3.mov ; or you can see it on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiwiDaUK_pM ; or it should be on DVblog (http://dvblog.org) in the near future. - Edward Picot http://edwardpicot.com - personal website http://hyperex.co.uk - The Hyperliterature Exchange (Source: Kairosnews - A Weblog for Discussing Rhetoric, Technology and Pedagogy) Mon, 20 Dec 2010 14:42:36 +0100 893996 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/dec/20/andy-mulligan-trash-blue-peter The children's author Andy Mulligan talks about his thriller, Trash, and how Blue Peter ducked a chance to take their viewers beyond the 'cotton-wool world' when they removed it from their book prize shortlistAndy Mulligan doesn't look like the kind of author you'd expect to find at the heart of a controversy around the "suitability" of his work for children. A mild-mannered, scholarly-looking English teacher in his mid-40s, Mulligan's first novel was a comic tale for 10-year-olds about an absurd school, Ribblestrop. But it's his second, Trash, which has sparked a debate over children's reading. A thriller about streetkids living on a dumpsite in the developing world, it was shortlisted for the Blue Peter award by the prize's judges, only to be dropped when they were overruled by one of the programme's editors. Not that there's any of the heroin abuse or underage sex which usually gets adult readers of children's books hot under the collar. The book was allegedly removed from the shortlist over a scene of violence, and one use of the word "shit".Mulligan describes himself as "disappointed" by a decision that came a week after he had been told he was a contender in the Favourite Stories category of the prize. The award is aimed at the TV programme's audience of, roughly, six to 12-year-olds – does he think his book should have been nominated for that age group?"There are some books that are unsuitable for children. I'd be surprised to see Burroughs' Naked Lunch on the equivalent shortlist," he says. "But a good book will upset someone, because the moment you engage with someone's imagination, you take them into both light and dark. Ask Philip Pullman. Ask Michael Morpurgo. Ask even Beatrix Potter, whose cosy animals were hunted, shot at and traumatised. What's 'suitable' is the journey we ask our readers to make. ... Mon, 20 Dec 2010 14:00:00 +0100 894011 http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/dec/20/scott-pilgrim-world-satellite-awards Edgar Wright's comic book movie is best motion picture comedy or musical and Michael Cera is best comedy actorWith its video game imagery, slacker geek protagonist and sardonic 20-something humour, it is not the type of fare which generally tends to capture the imagination of Hollywood awards body members. Yet the comic book movie Scott Pilgrim Vs the World began a late run for awards-season recognition at the weekend after it picked up a gong for best film of the year at the Satellite awards.British director Edgar Wright's film took the best motion picture comedy or musical gong at the awards, which are handed out by the International Press Academy and mimic the Golden Globes by splitting awards into drama and comedy categories. Star Michael Cera also carried off the best comedy actor award for his turn as the lovelorn yet pugilistic Pilgrim.The award comes as a surprise because Wright's movie was generally seen as something of a turkey at the US box office, though it did receive strong reviews. Cera et al are unlikely to be celebrating at the Oscars come February, as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences does not distinguish between comedy and drama, and rarely garlands the former. However, a Golden Globe run looks a distinct possibility.Elsewhere, The Social Network added to its haul of awards season wins by carrying off gongs for best motion picture drama, best director for David Fincher and best adapted screenplay for Aaron Sorkin, writer of The West Wing. Christopher Nolan's brainteaser thriller Inception won the awards for best score (Hans Zimmer), cinematography (Wally Pfister) and art direction and production design (Guy Hendrix Dyas, Luke Freeborn, Brad Ricker and Dean Wolcott).In the acting categories, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo's Noomi Rapace won best actress in a drama, Colin Firth was best actor in a drama for The King's Speech and Anne Hathaway was best actress in a comedy for Love and Other Drugs. ... Mon, 20 Dec 2010 11:29:02 +0100 894016 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/dec/20/secunda-pastorum-alfred-w-pollard With a stolen sheep standing in for the baby Jesus, this is a distinctly subversive take on the Nativity. Meanwhile, let us know which yuletide story is your favourite and we'll announce the winner on the Books blog on 24 DecemberI love Christmas for its continuities and if you want continuity that goes back further than 250 or so years you have to look beyond books. So it's the season to blow the dust off Alfred W Pollard's English Miracle Plays, Moralities and Interludes.The pencilled inscription reminds me that our second-hand copy of the 8th edition cost £4.95 in 1978, though the book itself was first published in 1890. It falls open at the Secunda Pastorum – the second shepherds' play – which must be one of the most subversive pieces of literature ever written. It's part of the Towneley Cycle of miracle plays, and stars Mak the sheep thief, culminating in a re-enactment of the nativity with a stolen sheep as the baby Jesus.The miracle plays were performed by guilds of tradesmen – and the workers who performed Towneley plays were probably based in Wakefield in West Yorkshire. The politics ring out from the very first lines of the Secunda Pastorum, in which the first of three shepherds rails against the exploitation of the poor:We are so hamydFor-taxed and ramydWe are mayde hand-tamyd,With thyse Gentlery men(We are so crippled, overtaxed and overstretched that we are broken by the gentry)But it doesn't stop there. After Mak rustles a sheep, his fellow shepherds search his house. They're about to give up when they discover the missing lamb hidden in a cradle. Mak's wife tries to convince them that it's a changeling, but they're not fooled. They are beginning to toss Mak in a blanket when an angel orders them to hurry off to Bethlehem for the nativity. So off they go.The play ends with the three wronged shepherds offering gifts of flour, a bird and a tennis ball to the "lytylle tyne[e acute] mop" (little tiny creature) in the crib. ... Mon, 20 Dec 2010 10:43:33 +0100 894010 http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2010/dec/19/swallows-and-amazons-bristol-review Bristol Old Vic; Royal Court, London SW1; Battersea Arts Centre, London SW11; Old Vic, London SE1The Christmas show grew up this year. Not into innuendo and violence – panto can take care of all that – but into stylishness, subversion and invention.It seemed unlikely that Arthur Ransome's square-jawed children's sailing stories, set before the second world war, and teeming with halyards and centreboards, could be dramatised without seeming a load of old rowlocks. Yet Tom Morris's production of Swallows and Amazons, exact and imaginative, is a triumph.Helen Edmundson's script floats on a buoyant tide of music by Neil Hannon of the Divine Comedy, whose recorder and fiddles carry a whiff of the marine that is both plaintive and yo-ho-ho. It retains Ransome's beastly rotters and duffers vocabulary, but not with a po face. The children are played by adults, and the youngest is enormous: he towers above his brothers and sisters, looking like Terry Waite in a romper suit. It captures something of what made Ransome adventurous as well as an adventure-story writer. The man who married Trotsky's secretary made his most interesting and rebellious characters girls: the piratical sisters, the Amazons, who "rattle our sabres to frighten the neighbours", ululate ferociously beneath their bonnets rouges.This is also a thing of beauty: it hints rather than doggedly, sea-doggedly, copies. A parrot made out of a feather duster has a pair of pliers for a beak; cormorants are rustled out of black bin bags. A boat is conjured up by a rim and a sail; vessels and creatures seen through a telescope are held up as tiny models. Dipping, as do Ransome's children, between fantastic flights and sturdiness, the vibrant Akiya Henry dives through the air into a lake suggested by a ring of blue ribbons, and comes up spluttering out drops of real water. ... Sun, 19 Dec 2010 00:06:17 +0100 893716 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/dec/19/andrew-miller-books-about-russia Novelists from Le Carré to Amis have an obsession with Russia. Small wonder: it's fertile territory for fictionA man walks into a room. Let's say he's 50-ish, greying, slightly dishevelled. What is his story? If he's a Russian, one of his grandparents might have died in the siege of Leningrad and another in the purges. After the grind and humdrum heroisms of the Soviet Union, he might have lost his savings and home to the hyperinflation and rackets of the 90s. Maybe along the way he fell in love, had children, did the commonplace things that make up the whole drama of lives lived elsewhere.All lives are interesting, and one of the jobs of fiction is to prove it. Still, that task is easier if they are Russian – which helps to explain why, as well as spewing out renegade oligarchs and rogue spooks, Russia has recently inspired an abundance of novels. I mean, specifically, novels set there by English-speaking authors, from thrillers such as Martin Cruz Smith's Arkady Renko mysteries, to Helen Dunmore's Leningrad books. (By contrast, surprisingly few home-grown, contemporary Russian writers have found wide foreign readerships. The Putin era has not in general been conducive to great literature.) The vogue for Russian-themed novels reflects Russia's enticing turbulence. But I think it also tells us something about our own moral anxieties.The country's appeal to Olga Grushin, Gary Shteyngart and David Bezmozgis is easy to understand. They were all born in the Soviet Union, emigrating to North America as children. They inherited a folk memory of suffering, plus the minutely descriptive Russian language. The dying Soviet Union, in which shortages could sometimes be overcome by ruses and yarns, was a natural breeding ground for fabulists. Finally, a system that had seemed adamantine crumbled; the world broke open (Grushin's The Dream Life of Sukhanov wonderfully captures the disorientation caused by this rupture). ... Sun, 19 Dec 2010 00:05:03 +0100 893715 http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2010/dec/19/pompeii-mary-beard-dirk-gently-review Mary Beard was a fine guide to the ruins of Pompeii, Patrick Stewart a subtle Macbeth – and Rebecca's BacoFoil dress no match for Matt CardlePompeii: Life and Death in a Roman Town (BBC2) | iPlayerDirk Gently (BBC4) | iPlayerMacbeth (BBC4) | iPlayerThe X-Factor (ITV1) | ITV PlayerCambridge classicist Mary Beard brought a good-natured balance of erudition and vulgarity to Pompeii: Life and Death in a Roman Town. The minute she'd said "shit" with that big smile, you knew "fuck", "piss" and "cocksucker" wouldn't be far behind, perhaps with a few statistics and a map of Mediterranean trading routes. But, what the buggery heck, it was an essential part of the tour here in sunny Pompeii with its humorous graffiti and lewd frescoes and phalluses pointing skyward wherever you looked. Interestingly, the "big willies everywhere", as she put it, were not a sign of an orgiastic mindset but simply a reminder of who wore the togas around here 2,000 years ago. In fact they did have a brothel, but it was a bit spartan. You couldn't imagine the court of Caligula rocking up for a bank holiday weekend of bacchanalia.By contrast the cesspits were well appointed, offering evidence in the layers of centuries-old excrement that ordinary folk dined on chicken, eggs and walnuts. Or so explained Mary, who was being shown round by another expert she met down here. "In archaeological terms, this is gold," he told her, with a leap of the imagination worthy of the record books.Beard is a great name even for a female professor, and I mean no disrespect when I say she has a determinedly ungroomed look. But traipsing as scruffily as eccentric high donnery would permit amid the evocative ruins of Pompeii, she was the perfect teller of this engaging story, which wasn't about the volcano – or leafy hill, as they probably still thought of Vesuvius before it went off in AD79 – but the sort of people who were prematurely buried by it. ... Sun, 19 Dec 2010 00:04:06 +0100 893724 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/dec/19/role-models-john-waters-review Cult film-maker John Waters's collection of interviews and profiles of his personal heroes reveals a shameless narcissist who strikes creepy, perverse posesWanting to be notorious and also well-liked is an oddly forked ambition, but for 40 years now John Waters has been treading his double path. In books such as the new Role Models he gives the paradoxes of his image some fine-tuning. The essay on art collecting has some charmingly brisk advice for the beginner (go to the second show of an artist you like and buy something for about $5,000) and everything on his list of Five Books You Should Read to Lead a Happy Life if Something is Basically the Matter With You is worth knowing. But the real message is: "Bet you didn't think that a film-maker best known for a scene of shit-eating would respond so fully to the drawings of Cy Twombly and the prose of Denton Welch, huh?"When it comes to interviewing the singer Johnny Mathis, his "polar opposite", the mismatch isn't perhaps as great as Waters thinks. It's hard to feel the contrast as electrifying in a world where Tony Bennett can play Glastonbury. In theory, Waters became interested after seeing Mathis off duty but effortlessly in role ("I never got over seeing Johnny Mathis in the parking lot"), but perhaps the epiphany has been surgically enhanced. Other things in the book that Waters never gets over include the media circus of the Manson trial and a show by minimalist sculptor Richard Tuttle.Print interviews are routinely pieced together after the event, using snippets of transcribed dialogue to support a more or less fictitious narrative. Waters's interview with Mathis is extreme, though, in the way it keeps its supposed subject dangling. ... Sun, 19 Dec 2010 00:04:02 +0100 893713 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/davidleeking/~3/uiQejqMreI8/ OK – first for the apology. Some of you have told me I was dismissive in my last three post, especially when I used phrases like “up in your grill.” I apologize for that. I really didn’t mean to sound dismissive – it was an attempt at humor while talking about a difficult subject. Honestly, it usually works – but it’s also not usually about such a sensitive issue. In this case, I failed miserably, and for that, I definitely apologize. Now on to the next part of the post – While my views on names and pics on websites haven’t really changed, it does bring up an interesting issue I’m seeing. With the name/pic thing, some of you have asked for what you would see as a more reasonable “opt in” approach. Here’s where I fall on that – opt in/volunteering usually doesn’t work to it’s full potential. In Topeka, it’s either someone’s job or it isn’t – we’re not fans of the opt-in approach. That said, of course we get staff buy-in for new projects first, which makes the whole “this is now part of your job” thing much easier. But this opt-in idea … in many libraries, it’s not just for whatever personal info goes on the library’s website. It’s also for other job duties, even for services of the library, like programming, teaching classes, or IM reference. I’ve seen volunteering for posting to a blog or for maintaining the library’s Facebook presence. I think a much better way to do things is for the library to set strategic goals, with staff input into those goals. After that, it’s management’s job to change/adapt the work to be done to meet those organizational priorities. There’s really no room for opt-in there. ... Sat, 18 Dec 2010 18:03:37 +0100 893947 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/kkJF/~3/WLIJ1oO0Zls/een-pagegaai-zingt-let-bodies-hit-floor.html Ik ben geen fan van Drowning Pool, maar nu ik deze pagepaai hun nummer Let The Bodies Hit The Floor hoor 'zingen', moet ik onbedaarlijk lachen. Het nummer is geliefd in hooliganfilmpjes. @ (Source: Digitaal Inlichtingenwerk Zeeuwse Bibliotheek) Sat, 18 Dec 2010 11:38:00 +0100 893662 http://lisnews.org/amazon_provides_dose_humor Pogue's Post at NYT.com Anyway, there’s one peculiar strand of humor, one tiny, specific corner of the Internet, that gets me every time: it’s when everybody gangs up on some obscure or ridiculous product on Amazon.com and leaves bogus reviews for it. It’s awe-inspiring how people seem to arrive as though orchestrated by a leader who doesn’t exist, and how their reviews seem legitimate at first glance but become screamingly hilarious once you figure out what’s going on. Full article (Source: LISNews.org) Sat, 18 Dec 2010 06:06:55 +0100 893578 http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2010/dec/18/frank-capra-bfi-season-review It's A Wonderful Life is a Christmas tradition – and the film that has preserved Frank Capra's popularity. It is too easy to dismiss his work as sentimental, prudish and politically naive, argues Michael Newton. Many of his movies are still magicalOf all Hollywood directors, Frank Capra is the most loved and the least respected. From the early 1930s to the mid 40s, as the maker of such classic movies as It Happened One Night (1934), You Can't Take It with You (1938) and Mr Smith Goes to Washington (1939), he achieved fame, won Oscars and found huge audiences. Yet for every film-fan who warms to his work, there's a hard-nosed critic eager to pounce on this purveyor of "Capra-corn". He offers a personal vision, but it's one that has been judged suspect, offering up a sentimental and duplicitous Americanism. To those on the left, he has seemed a fascist; to those on the right, a communist. In their own minds, it's plain that the new Tea Party representatives see themselves as acting out a Capra movie, though of course one purged of any taint of socialism. It's meant to seem a small step from Jimmy Stewart playing Jefferson Smith to Sarah Palin.To dislike the work is to distrust the man, for Capra's films were emphatically his own creation. His motto was "one man, one picture", his movies marked by his unusual insistence that his name appear above the title, possessing the enterprise – it was always "Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life". This advocate of American democracy spearheaded the vision of the autocratic film director, making personal films despite the compromises of collaboration or the confines of the studio system. Bossiness came naturally to him; reading his autobiography, his vanity astounds you. For a moment, you can only catch the complacency in his films. ... Sat, 18 Dec 2010 00:07:26 +0100 893554 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/dec/18/first-novels-reviews Coconut Unlimited by Nikesh Shukla, The Spider Truces by Tom Connolly, Down to the Dirt by Joel Thomas Hynes and Sleepwalker by John ToomeyCoconut Unlimited, by Nikesh Shukla (Quartet, £10)Harrow, London, early 1990s. In this Costa-shortlisted debut, Amit, Anand and Nishant belong to neither the world of their white private school, where they are mocked as the only Asian pupils, nor that of their traditional Gujarati families, where their lack of interest in science infuriates their parents. So they decide to embrace a new identity – as black rappers. That none of them has even spoken to a black person, and they have only the faintest idea of Public Enemy etc, is, apparently, not a problem. Their hip-hop band, Coconut Unlimited, will transcend the taunt levelled at them: "Brown on the outside, white on the inside." Yet Anand becomes sidetracked by girls, and it is left to Amit to galvanise the group. What the writing lacks in depth and maturity, Shukla makes up for with irreverence and humour.The Spider Truces, by Tom Connolly (Myriad, £7.99)A remote corner of Kent is the background to Connolly's magical coming-of-age novel, set between 1976 and 1989. Denny O'Rourke, struggling to come to terms with the death of his wife, moves his daughter Chrissie and her younger brother Ellis to a run-down woodland cottage, which he aims to restore as they rebuild their lives. Denny's eccentric Aunt Mafi completes the picture. Ellis is an awkward, unusual boy, given to outrageous utterances, dominated by a fear of the spiders dwelling in every corner of the house; the negotiation with Ellis's ongoing terror and his challenging singularity is one of many family battles focused on personal boundaries and freedom. Growing up, Ellis prefers to spend time on the local farm; later he will develop a talent for photography, but relationships remain a mystery to him in this fierce, humane and hazily poetic work.Down to the Dirt, by Joel Thomas Hynes (Brandon, £9. ... Sat, 18 Dec 2010 00:07:15 +0100 893558 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/dec/18/music-books-christmas-roundup1 Huw Richards on the real sporting stories of the last 12 monthsThat the personal is also publishable has long been the unspoken credo of the William Hill prize – sport's answer to the Booker – a tendency underpinned by its having, unlike the Booker, continuity of judges. From a 130-entry list notable for depth, they followed established tastes in choosing former rugby player Brian Moore's Beware of the Dog (Simon & Schuster, £7.99). The England hooker's second book follows one of the game's better ghosted memoirs (1995) and digs much deeper into an abrasively intelligent, ultra-competitive persona. Moore tells unflinchingly of sexual abuse by a teacher, an alter ego named Gollum and insecurities that made him both an outstanding player and a difficult human being. It is rarely comfortable, but always compelling.It is, author Tom English acknowledges, greatly to Moore's credit that he helped with The Grudge (Yellow Jersey, £12.99), a vivid recreation of one of his bitterest days – England's defeat by Scotland in 1990. English emphasises a political context in which an England team led and epitomised by Will Carling, who emerges more sympathetically than usual, were cast as avatars of Thatcherism. Moore, while relishing his casting as a hate-figure for Scots, sympathised with their political grievances.If Moore is a worthy beneficiary of William Hill preferences, Jonathan Wilson, the most interesting current football writer, has been their victim. His tactical history, Inverting the Pyramid, is one of the best sports books of the past decade, never mind of the year in which it was shortlisted. This year's The Anatomy of England (Orion, £14.99) isn't quite that good, but by other standards it's exceptional. As ever, Wilson is tactically, historically and culturally literate, with a sharp eye for telling anecdote. ... Sat, 18 Dec 2010 00:06:56 +0100 893565 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/dec/18/adrian-mole-sue-townsend-bookclub Week two: Sue Townsend describes how Adrian Mole and his diary emerged from an old cardboard boxI had one ambition when I was a child, and that was to grow up and become an adult. I couldn't wait to get the hell out of childhood.I was a secretive, reckless girl, who enjoyed sitting on the swaying top branch of a tree, looking down on the everyday world. Acute curiosity led me to explore the Leicestershire countryside. I set off on my Pink Witch bike. I didn't have a companion. Companions were forever whining that they were tired and hungry and wanted the toilet. When I got hungry I would search for a specific grass. It had velvety leaves and a sweet inner stalk. While I nibbled on the stalk I read my book. There was always a book – I knew no child who read with the same passion as me. After visiting the village church and listening to the loudness of the silence and saying hello to Jesus, I would pedal home in the twilight. Nobody asked me where I'd been, and I didn't volunteer the information.I left school at 14. I was an Easter leaver, a no-hoper. But since being taught about infinity I felt that nothing really mattered, that we humans were transient specks in the universe. I had started to arrive late at school, I stopped doing my homework, I played truant. When teachers got angry I would switch off and think about infinity. Like many writers I had an influential English teacher – pale, austere Miss Morris, who expected us to learn a poem by heart each week: Shakespeare, Milton, GK Chesterton, Keats, Shelley, Sitwell, Wilde . . . We also wrote a weekly composition: "A Day in the Life of a Penny" and "I am a Chippendale Chair". I lost a school writing competition because, as Miss Morris told me sadly, "You used a cliché, Susan. Clouds like cotton wool."When I left school I continued to write, and because I knew it was no good, I kept my writing a secret – for 20 years. ... Sat, 18 Dec 2010 00:06:50 +0100 893567 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/dec/18/atlas-islands-san-francisco-review Robert Macfarlane is enchanted by two cartographical conceitsIn September 1842 the Antarctic explorer Charles Wilkes was court-martialed on a charge of "immoral mapping". Two years earlier Wilkes had claimed to have sighted the coast of a "vast Antarctic continent", visible across an "impenetrable barrier of ice". He had modestly named his discovery "Wilkes Land", mapped it and reported his find to the Secretary of the American Navy. But the following year the English explorer James Ross falsified Wilkes's claim, dismissing Wilkes Land as "a pseudo-continent" – and so Wilkes was hauled into court on suspicion of cartographical deceit.It is now thought likely that Wilkes had in fact himself been deceived, the victim of a mirage bred by cloud vapour and refracted light, peculiar to the trickster optics of the Antarctic. Mirages are not the same as illusions: they are, as it were, real hallucinations – authentic experiences of the eye.Wilkes had seen a cloud-mass which impeccably mimicked a land-mass, and in that sense his map had told the truth.The history of cartography is littered with such pseudo-continents, chimerical islands, dream-rivers and other Wilkean visions, flickering between the literal and the mythical. This is partly because cartographers have often tended also to be dreamers, seduced into their science by the beauty of maps and the flights of imagination that they prompt. Maps seek to mark the world and fix its flux, but in doing so they also loosen it from its moorings: as documents, they are at once fiercely empirical and faintly mystical.Judith Schalansky was a map-dreamer from a young age. Born in East Germany in 1980, unable to journey far because of state restrictions, she became "a child of the atlas". By the time the Berlin wall fell she had "already grown used to travelling through the atlas by finger . . . ... Sat, 18 Dec 2010 00:06:46 +0100 893568 http://lorelibrarian.wordpress.com/2010/12/17/interesting-things-of-the-week-89/ Photoshop Tutorial Rap – from College Humor 10 Alternatives To Delicious.com Bookmarking How Video Games Are Infiltrating–and Improving–Every Part of Our Lives How to Create an Opera Extension from Scratch 101 Free Tech Books – win free books Tagged: links (Source: Lore Librarian) Fri, 17 Dec 2010 15:00:04 +0100 893910 http://bsf.org.br/2010/12/17/fim-de-ano-na-biblioteca-dormir-sono/ Provas finais e final de ano na biblioteca, é mais ou menos assim. Quase tão bom quanto o álbum da Klara. todas as fotos emprestadas do BuzzFeed em posts relacionados. Visite o blog e faça sua busca manual. (Source: Bibliotecários Sem Fronteiras 2.0) Fri, 17 Dec 2010 12:21:43 +0100 893982 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/kkJF/~3/F76NDiOLjkU/gouden-combi-de-wiet-en-de-biebpas.html Ik zie opeens een gat in de markt! Als we die wietpas nu gewoon koppelen aan het biebabonnement hoeven er geen nieuwe passen gemaakt te worden en boren wij een mooi, groot en rustig nieuw publiek aan. Nederland is toch al helemaal gek geworden, daar kun je met een gerust hart op inhaken. Gerelateerd: Bibliotheken wietvrij! Een mooi verhaal! Over papegaaien, wiet in de bieb en het stelen van boeken Een multimediale hangplek voor jongeren @ Afbeelding (Source: Digitaal Inlichtingenwerk Zeeuwse Bibliotheek) Fri, 17 Dec 2010 10:31:00 +0100 893414 http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/dec/16/culturomics-google-tool-cultural-trends Two hundred years of history in the form of 5,195,769 digitised books can now be probed for cultural trends using Google's new culturomics toolEmail updates and links to science@guardian.co.uk. We'd like to hear about your own research using the new tool. What trends have you unearthed? The paper's authors have agreed to analyse some of the best ones for usRead the research in Science (register to view it in full)Friday 17 December 3.34pm: Our own Martin Robbins has used the tool to identify a marked cultural trend in favour of a certain liberal-leaning newspaper.Friday 3.27pm: A vast collection of Google ngrams is already being amassed at #ngrams on Twitter.Friday 3.21pm: A bona fide linguistics researcher has weighed in with a blopost at the Language Log. Geoff Nunberg of the University of California Berkeley welcomes the research, and the new Google tool, but looks forward to more bells and whistles:The big news is that Google has set up a site called the Google Books Ngram Viewer where the public can enter words or n-grams (to 5) for any period and corpus and see the resulting graph. They've also announced that the entire dataset of n-grams will be made available for download. Some reports have interpreted this as meaning that Google is making the entire corpus available. It isn't, alas, nor even the pre-1923 portion of the corpus that's in public domain. One can hope…At present, that's all you can with this. You can't do many of the things that you can do with other corpora: you can't ask for a list of the words that follow traditional for each decade from 1900 to 2000 in order of descending frequency, or restrict a search for bronzino to paragraphs that contain fish and don't contain painting, etc. And while Lieberman Aiden and Michel made an impressive effort to purge the subcorpus of the metadata errors that have plagued Google Books, you can't sort books by genre or topic. ... Fri, 17 Dec 2010 08:10:47 +0100 893359 http://mcpldteens.blogspot.com/2010/12/graphic-novel-review.html Wormwood: Gentleman Corpse Vol. 1Birds, Bees, Beer & Bloodby Ben TemplesmithSmart-aleck jokes, grotesque dismemberment, a sentient worm living inside a corpse's eye socket, male alien pregnancy, strippers, and beer - these are just a few of the wonderful things you will find in this beautifully illustrated graphic novel. Some readers will be very attracted to it, and some will be utterly disgusted. Created, written, drawn, and designed by Ben Templesmith, who is best-known for 30 Days of Night, this is the best graphic novel I have read in months. It is very funny, almost silly at times, yet it is about saving the world from a demon. The humor is really just a bonus to the great characters, fascinating story, and incredibly visceral drawings. I was really bummed when it ended. I hope Volume 2 comes out soon!Trevor~Youth Services (Source: Teen Stuff @ Mesa County Libraries) Fri, 17 Dec 2010 05:00:00 +0100 894762 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/JohnBattellesSearchblog/~3/C7QQxCw6DD4/thinking_out_loud_whats_driving_groupon.php In the current issue of the New Yorker, columnist James Surowiecki, who I generally admire, gets it exactly wrong when it comes to Groupon. He writes: " But it seems unlikely that it’s going to become a revolutionary company, along the lines of YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Google. ....Groupon, by contrast, is a much more old-school business. It doesn’t have any obvious technological advantage. Its users don’t really do anything other than hit the “buy” button. And its business requires lots of hands-on attention..." Well, that's a defensible opinion, but after visiting CEO Andrew Mason this week in Chicago, and thinking about it a bit, I must say that I wholeheartedly diasagree. Many folks think of Groupon as a relatively simple idea. A daily deal, a large sales force, and that's about it. Too easy to copy (there are scores of "Groupon clones"), and too labor intensive (the more small businesses you want to work with, the more sales and service people you need). All this is true. But it fails to understand the power of Groupon's model. To sum it up: Groupon has built a new channel into the heart of the the world's economic activity: Small businesses. And it is that channel where the true power lies. First, the economic math: Small businesses create more than 50% of US GDP and create more than 75% of net new jobs each year. But small businesses represent a fragmented, maddeningly difficult sector of our economy - 23 million small pieces loosely joined. Any platform that has connected them and added value to their bottom line has turned into a massive new business. Over the past century, there have been two such new platforms. The most recent is Google, a proxy for the rise of the web as a platform for small business lead generation. Before that, it was the Yellow Pages, a proxy for the rise of the telephone as a platform for lead generation. ... Fri, 17 Dec 2010 05:00:00 +0100 893574 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Blogpocket/~3/PdYhZZjUlkM/ En esta segunda temporada de El blog de la semana, seguimos prestando especial atención a blogs personales de reciente aparición o con menos de dos años de existencia. Ya han pasado por aquí: Asteroide B612, Fotonazos, Las clavículas del vago y Corazón dividido. Kebrantin es el blog de Miguel PM (@miguelpaezm), informático de profesión y amante de las nuevas tecnologías, viajes y fotografía y otro de los blogs que recientemente han iniciado su andadura por la Blogosfera. El propósito de Miguel Páez con Kebrantin es loable: quitarse monotonía que tenemos en nuestras vidas. Humor, noticias curiosas, actualidad, informática, turismo. Hacer lo difícil fácil, según me contó hace poco en una de esas reuniones repleta de descubrimientos insólitos . Un blog absolutamente recomendable al que deseamos una larga y fructífera singladura. Todos las entradas de esta serie: El blog de la semana. Blogpocket.com: blog ganador en los Premios Bitacoras.com 2010, en la categoría Premio Especial Honorífico También puedes leerme en Twitter y en Weblog Magazine Y si te gusta la música, no dejes de suscribirte a Acordes Modernos, finalista en los Premios Bitacoras.com 2010, en la categoría Mejor Blog Cultural (Source: blogpocket 6.0) Thu, 16 Dec 2010 21:23:34 +0100 893878 http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2010/dec/16/douglas-adams-dirk-gently-bbc4 Here's hoping that tonight's one-off show penned by Misfits writer Howard Overman and starring Stephen Mangan, leads to a full seriesIt was one of the abiding frustrations of the late Douglas Adams's life that his Dirk Gently novels were never adapted for the screen. That all changes tonight with BBC4's take on the holistic detective – a 60-minute one-off scripted by the Bafta-winning Misfits writer Howard Overman, that looks like it's angling for a full series. Combining the wit, daring and flair that made the Hitchhiker's Guide series a publishing phenomenon, the less celebrated Dirk Gently books were a private joy for many readers captivated by their organising principle "the fundamental interconnectedness of things". Fan bases came no more devoted.That connection Adams had with his readers is central to his legacy. One of only two writers outside of the core circle to pen a Monty Python sketch, he had the comedy writing chops to make science fiction palatable for readers who found it that bit too earnest. Doubters overcame literary snobbery, and fell in love with a genre that teems with invention – ushering in a whole new audience into a world of cosmic hobos, alien ghosts and doggerel spewing bureaucrats.As a fan of the books, it's a little disappointing to see that the BBC4 rendition contains no Professor Chronotis, no Coleridge cameo, and not even an Electric Monk – the BBC budget regrettably not stretching to the moon on a stick. And to me, it seemed that Stephen Mangan and Darren Boyd (as Gently and sidekick MacDuff) struggle slightly to find the kind of genius-meets-Everyman chemistry that came so easily to Dominic Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman in Sherlock. I'd be interested on your thoughts later as to whether you agree.But standalone episodes are tricky that way. You have to introduce characters, relationships, backstory as well as show what a regular episode will look like - it's always a plate spinning act. ... Thu, 16 Dec 2010 13:34:09 +0100 893104 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/MKuf/~3/Gbea4UI62jw/celebrating-10-years-in-chicago.html These days, you probably know the city of Chicago as the home of great comedy, amazing parks, soaring skyscrapers, championship hockey and—no matter what our colleagues at Google NYC say—the greatest pizza in the world. But you might not know that Chicago is also home to one of Google’s oldest U.S. offices: this week Google Chicago celebrated its 10th anniversary. To mark the event, we celebrated with a party, a giant anniversary cake (18 lbs of butter, 100+ eggs and 60 lbs fondant) and most importantly, 10 community grants to 10 organizations in Chicago.Over the past 10 years, Google Chicago has grown in terms of both size and responsibilities—we started with just two members of our nascent sales team, but today we have more than 400 employees in our office across engineering, sales and operations. Chicago too has certainly come a long way from Carl Sandburg’s days and we’re proud to be playing a small part in making the city a center for technological innovation.Along the way, we’ve been fortunate to work with folks from around the region to make things better for users. Our Apps team has helped bring our email and app solutions to students at both Notre Dame University and Northwestern University, we’ve built a project with the Chicago Transit Authority and last year, we announced, alongside Mayor Daley, Google’s $3.2 billion economic impact on Illinois. We’re also particularly proud of our contributions to Google. Our Chicago-based engineering team launched the Data Liberation Front, which allows users to export their data from our products, from the ground up. With those efforts, the team has begun to change the way consumers think about web services and data portability. In 2007, we acquired Chicago-based FeedBurner, and today the product has been fully integrated into Google’s ad platform. ... Thu, 16 Dec 2010 05:00:00 +0100 893479 http://146.74.224.231/archives/2010/12/happy_birthday_5.html Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery. - Jane Austen Born December 16, 1775 in the village of Steventon in Hampshire, England, Jane Austen changed the face of English literature with her six novels of love and everyday life amongst the gentry. Her sharp wit and keen powers of observation both describe and satirize the world in which she lived, and resulted in some of the most memorable characters in literature. Nearly 200 years after after the publication of her first book, Sense & Sensibility, her novels are still widely read and much beloved, inspiring countless sequels, spin-offs, re-writes, and film and television adaptations. Still haven't read Austen? Want to find out what all the fuss is about? Check out her books at any Santa Clara County Library! Sense & Sensibility: The story of Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, two sisters of opposite temperament left relatively impoverished by the death of their father. Elinor, the "sense" of the title, is rational and reserved, while Marianne, "sensibility," is passionate and impulsive. With this novel of love, heartbreak, and horrible relatives, Jane Austen began to make a name for herself. Pride & Prejudice: The love story between the spirited Elizabeth Bennet and the snooty Mr. Darcy is truly one of the most beloved stories ever written. Austen's humor and insight into the human character are spot-on. Mansfield Park: Another strong, relatable heroine navigates life, love, and class differences in Austen's third published work. Fanny Price is the poor cousin of the fabulously wealthy Bertrams, who took her in as a child. Continually made to feel inferior, Fanny does not dare to dream that her cousin Edmund could ever return her love. But her quiet life takes an interesting turn with the arrival of the unconventional and mischievous Crawfords. Emma: Emma is a spoiled, bored young woman who decides to busy herself by matchmaking amongst her friends. ... Thu, 16 Dec 2010 01:18:42 +0100 892991 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/BPLDNews/~3/Be_z2WUjYik/celebrate-holidays-with-movie-at-buena.html Enjoy Movie Time at the Library to celebrate the holidays. Showtime is on Saturday, December 18, 2010 from 2:30 to 4:00 pm.Bring the whole family and take a break from shopping, baking, or whatever else is keeping you busy this holiday season and enjoy a wonderful movie filled with humor and warmth. This movie is a nostalgic and witty remembrance of a time gone by.Due to our licensing agreement, we cannot disclose the title of the film here; but if you want to see the famous leg lamp and hear dialog such as: "I want an official Red Ryder, carbine action, two-hundred shot range model air rifle!" and "No, you'll shoot your eye out" --- join us on Saturday!!The movie is rated PG (please call the Library at 714-826-4100 x125 for the title of the movie--if you haven't guessed already from the above clues). Bring your favorite snack and join us for this entertaining movie. (Source: Buena Park Library District News) Wed, 15 Dec 2010 23:17:44 +0100 893065 http://mcls.org/blog/?p=813 James Childress, who has worked in MCLS’s member services department for two years, will be leaving MCLS at the end of this week.  James and his family are returning to Rugby, North Dakota, where James will work with his father at Childress Insurance, Inc. James has been a tremendous asset to MCLS, and we are sad to see him go.  We will miss his dedication to timely and accurate group licensing renewals, as well as his quirky sense of humor.  We wish him and his family the best of luck in their new venture! Starting next week, please direct your member services and group purchasing questions to Diana Mitchell (ext. 112) or Brian Austin (ext. 139) at services@mcls.org. (Source: MLC Blog) Wed, 15 Dec 2010 20:02:49 +0100 894104 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/a-informacao/~3/Rq9beEu2-cg/maquina-que-vende-informacao.html Um pouco de humor! Será que no futuro existirá este tipo de máquina? Gostaria de receber os comentários dos leitores do nosso blog. Murilo Cunha Fonte: GoComics. URL: http://imgsrv.gocomics.com/dim/?fh=28abd36f346573d692580b4196ec87ef&w=450.0 (Source: A "INFORMAÇÃO") Wed, 15 Dec 2010 19:40:00 +0100 892951 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/dec/15/poetry-protest-politics Should poets be leading the charge in rousing metres, or reflecting thoughtfully on the sidelines?Last week's images of mounted policemen charging the protesters around Parliament Square evoked multiple memories: the poll tax riots in John Major's 90s; the angry young of Brixton and Toxteth in Thatcher's 80s; even, for the historically minded, the Peterloo massacre in 1819, where magistrates sent in cavalry to disperse a crowd of over 60,000 who had gathered to protest for political reform. Shortly after the massacre, in which several were killed and several hundred injured, Thomas Love Peacock wrote of it to his friend Percy Bysshe Shelley in Italy. Shelley was so moved by Peacock's description of the events that he responded by penning The Masque of Anarchy, a poem that advocates both radical social action and non-violent resistance: "Shake your chains to earth like dew / Which in sleep had fallen on you- / Ye are many — they are few".At times of upheaval and unrest, is poetry's role to fan the flames or cool tempers? Down the centuries it has proved remarkably effective at both. Against a background of civil unrest in 1970s America, Gil Scott-Heron told the world "you will not be able to stay home, brother". In his searing, satirical masterpiece "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" on the album Small Talk at 125th and Lennox. Scott-Heron offers a line in tightly-wrought comic surrealism; "The revolution will not show you pictures of Nixon blowing a bugle and leading a charge by John Mitchell, General Abrams and Spiro Agnew to eat hog maws confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary." But it is as much his delivery, his voice impassioned but not quite righteous, that electrifies the poem.Scott-Heron's influence is evident in a generation of young British spoken word poets and performers who have emerged with a political agenda. ... Wed, 15 Dec 2010 17:02:20 +0100 892959 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/audio/2010/dec/15/sounds-jewish-2010-review The Guardian's Jonathan Freedland joins Jason to look back at a year in which Jewish people took centre stage politically and culturally.Ed Miliband became the first Jewish leader of the Labour party and, as well as telling the story of the flight of his father and grandfather from Belgium in 1940 at September's party conference, he finally used the J-word in public. We ask, with Howard Jacobson's The Finkler Question winning the Booker Prize, have Jews found their place in British culture? And if so, why did so many in the media – with the honourable exception of Sounds Jewish – avoid the novel's theme of British anti-Zionism.In 2010 Israel was less in the news than it had been in previous years - May's attack on the Gaza aid flotilla aside. Is this because diaspora communities are finding their own way rather than seeing themselves as satellites of Israel?Also in May, BNP leader Nick Griffin was soundly beaten to the Barking seat in the general election by Labour MP Margaret Hodge. Was this an example of Jewish people showing others the way forward in defeating fascism? And is anyone really buying the pro-Israel stance of the BNP and other British far-right groups? It seems not. David Baddiel's film The Infidel, released in April and starring Omid Djalili, was surely the first example of a British Jewish/Muslim film, and was generally well received. So why, judging by its takings at the box office, didn't more Jews and Muslims go to see it?And we relive the visit of irrepressible comedy duo Ronna and Beverly, who told Jason that Mad Men's Don Draper smells of scotch and testicles "but in a good way".Sounds Jewish is produced in association with the Jewish Community Centre for LondonJason SolomonsJonathan Freedland (Source: Guardian Unlimited Books) Wed, 15 Dec 2010 17:00:00 +0100 892964 http://www.teleread.com/paul-biba/ebooks-take-the-fun-out-of-giving-well-allow-me-to-retort/ Every now and again, missives like this one entitled “How the rise of e-readers takes the fun out of giving books” from the Canadian Globe and Mail by Leah McLaren pop up and bounce around the web. They make me chuckle. Their common theme is that, essentially, you can’t wrap ebooks and stick them under your Christmas tree. They are only one step away from those “but what about the smell of books” rants bemoaning the changing of technology. Don’t get me know – if people don’t like ebooks, and enjoy dead trees with words on them, that’s their right. But call a spade a spade. Why don’t you ever see a post titled, “I don’t like ebooks because I just don’t like change generally.” That would be honest. These people are entitled to their opinions, but so am I. So allow me to offer some counter-arguments… Publishing-industry experts are calling the holiday season a “tipping point” – with good reason. Curling up with a new novel on Christmas morning will never be the same. Thank whomever your Lord is for that one. A decade or more ago, I went through a period when the unwrapping of any book-shaped gift revealed the latest in the 101 Uses for a Dead Cat comedy cartoon book series. After 90 seconds of flicking, I needed its companion edition: 101 Uses For an Unwanted Book. No. 17 – frisbee. If ebooks and vouchers were around, I could have been reading the book I was actually craving within two minutes tops. Stay with me! I swear this is not going to be one of those hackneyed columns about how much we’ll all miss the old-fashioned book. I travel too much to be sentimental about the beauty of marginalia or the satisfying crack of a hardcover spine. Hauling books around the globe has cost me thousands in excess baggage fees, and left me with a hyper-extended left shoulder and a nagging sense of having misplaced something important. ... Wed, 15 Dec 2010 14:34:18 +0100 892895 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/dec/15/rowan-somerville-good-sex-fiction From Bram Stoker to Vladimir Nabokov, the novelist selects the best writing about a subject 'central to much of our lives and indeed life itself'Rowan Somerville is the author of two novels, The End of Sleep and this year's The Shape of Her, described by the Economist as "deceptively simple in plot and singularly musical in its voice, it is a study of the place where our past has become our present. A summer read to be kept – and visited in the dark days of winter..." Last month, the novel followed authors including John Updike and Norman Mailer in winning the Literary Review's Bad Sex in fiction award."Most adults are interested in sex. I am. My father was, and said as much to me when he was 92. I suspect that you are too. You're reading this after all. Being so central to much of our lives and indeed life itself, it is a valid and important topic for fiction."The challenge of writing about sex is to evoke the physicality, the yearning, the counterpoint between magnificent operatic grandiosity and ludicrous bestial grunting – without resorting to cliché. As the American author Elizabeth Benedict wrote: 'A good sex scene is not always about good sex, but it is always an example of good writing.' As an enthusiastic reader and a writer too, my opinion is that it doesn't matter how weird things get as long as it remains original and feels authentic."Some of the sex in the books below works as a device for revealing the state of society, some is a device for characterisation; a way of revealing truths about characters that they themselves may not be able to see – but most of it is just about desire, lust and sex itself."10. Platform by Michel Houellebecq (2003) Strange perhaps to begin this list with a book I really dislike – but churlish I feel to leave it out when it is such a reflection of contemporary views. ... Wed, 15 Dec 2010 12:21:41 +0100 892957 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/dec/15/seasons-readings-corrections-jonathan-franzen What could be more seasonal than a middle-class mother trying to drag her fractured family together for 'one last Christmas'? Meanwhile, let us know which yuletide story is your favourite and we'll announce the winner on the Books blog on 24 DecemberChristmas, as Richard Lea observed earlier this advent, really is about children. They're the ones who get to believe in Santa Claus and don't get claustrophobic being surrounded by family. For we more-or-less grownups, most of its joys come from combining nostalgia for the tingling thrill it delivered in our own childhoods with the presence of children coming to it fresh. Even God, we know, has his attention largely focused on the littluns at this time of year. Little wonder most of the properly seasonal stories are for kids.These slightly bah-humbug sentiments bring me to my choice of The Corrections. This isn't a book "about" Christmas, but about many and various aspects of middle-class life in the US at the tail-end of the 20th century. Its central focus is the Lamberts, a dysfunctional but not wholly atypical family trying, and very often failing, to adjust to American society's demands.There is Albert, the broken-down patriarch, whom old age and the end of the tangible industrial era has drained of his command, and who is falling inexorably under the sway of Parkinson's and dementia. His children, in their own ways, are equally lost: Denise, a ritzy chef brought low by her romantic misadventures; Gary, a materially successful but stroppily despairing banker; and Chip the brainy manchild, pinning his dwindling hopes on a wretched screenplay. And there is Enid, Albert's wife, anxiously hanging on to blind optimism and nagging at all of them to convene for "one last Christmas" at the midwestern home where she is raggedly trying to hold together her disintegrating husband.The fetish she makes of Christmas has uncomfortably recognisable comedy and pathos. ... Wed, 15 Dec 2010 12:15:46 +0100 892956 http://www.cilip.org.uk/about-us/people/council/Pages/bio_poole.aspx Nick Poole (to serve until 31 December 2012) Postnominals: BA MA Email: Nick.Poole@cilip.org.uk  BiographyNick Poole is Chief Executive of the Collections Trust, an independent UK charity working with libraries, archives and museums. He also represents the UK at the Member States Expert Group for Digitisation at the European Commission and is responsible for advising a number of European agencies and Governments on digital priorities in Culture and libraries. Prior to joining the Collections Trust in 2005, Nick held a number of roles at the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA), including responsibility for Regional policy development and as a National ICT Adviser. Before this, he worked in the financial services sector. In addition to his role within CILIP, Nick is a Councillor of the Museums Association and a Trustee of the UK part of the International Council of Museums. Nick is a regular lecturer at several Universities and has published on subjects ranging from the economics of cultural services to international Copyright and Cultural Property law. He studied Languages at Cambridge University and holds postgraduate qualifications in Historical Linguistics and Fine Art & Illustration. He also studied the History and Philosophy of Science at Birkbeck College. In his spare time, Nick enjoys reading, spending time with his family and hosting a successful regular music and poetry event. He also works with a number of HE and FE providers in an advisory capacity on the implementation and use of eLearning systems and Virtual Learning Environments. He was previously compere of a successful comedy club in London’s West End.   Read Nick Poole's 2010 Candidate Election Manifesto. (Source: CILIP – Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals) Wed, 15 Dec 2010 11:35:35 +0100 893041 http://kidslit.menashalibrary.org/2010/12/15/the-boss-baby-so-funny-and-so-true/ The Boss Baby by Marla Frazee When the baby arrives it is obvious that he is the boss of the household.  He makes constant demands which if not met result in a fit.  He expects lots of perks like beverages whenever he asks.  And he needs lots of attention, or meetings.  But you can only push employees so far, and when they near collapse, the boss is forced to think outside the box!  This very funny take on being a new parent and welcoming a baby into a home is perfect for expectant parents and just might give new siblings an idea of what they are in store for.  Frazee’s tone in the text here is delightful with its business terms and matter of fact approach.  Her text plays the straight man against the humor of her illustrations.  The baby with his little striped tie and business-suit sleeper is the epitome of the grumpy baby.  Frazee has captured those sleep-deprived early days of a baby to great effect and with glorious humor. Get this hilarious book into the hands of new parents and new siblings.  They are sure to relate to it and laugh out loud if not too sleep deprived.  Appropriate for ages 4-6. Reviewed from copy received from Beach Lane Books. Also reviewed by: Maw Books Blog A Patchwork of Books Read It Again, Mom Stacy’s Books (Source: Kids Lit) Wed, 15 Dec 2010 05:00:00 +0100 893242 http://kidslit.menashalibrary.org/2010/12/15/the-great-monster-hunt/ The Great Monster Hunt by Norbert Landa and Time Warnes Duck is awoken early in the morning by a strange sound coming from under her bed.  It was a pshh pshh sound.  Duck did not know what it was and was too scared to look under the bed.  So instead she jumped out of bed and ran to get help.  Yelling out of her window, Duck called to Pig and told him what she had heard.  Pig ran to get someone stronger than he to deal with it.  When he found Bear, he told Bear that the noise was pshh pshh Bang Bang!  Bear suggested they find someone loud enough to deal with the noise that was being made and they went to find Wolf.  Wolf was told about the noise that had gotten even more complicated by that point, and he suggested that they find someone smart to deal with it.  So off they all went to Owl.  The four animals returned to Duck’s house with supplies to fight the monster, but it is not a monster they find under Duck’s bed!  It’s a tiny mouse snoring quietly with a pshh pshh sound. This book has just the right amount of tension for young children to get involved but not alarmed.  The build up of the noise from one animal to the next demonstrates the problems with getting news through the grapevine and how things can be blown way out of proportion!  Even if children do not get this lesson from the book, it is a fun comedy of errors for them to enjoy.  The illustrations are very friendly with small touches like Wolf’s record player and Owl’s newspaper that add to the gentleness of the story.  A great book to mix into a monster story time just for the effect of the lack of a monster.   This is also a great Halloween read for the youngest listeners.  Appropriate for ages 3-5. Reviewed from library copy. (Source: Kids Lit) Wed, 15 Dec 2010 05:00:00 +0100 893241 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ProvidencePublicLibraryComputerClasses/~3/ENrQH9Ndem8/life-is-partly-what-we-make-it-and.html I came to Facebook rather late but I have jumped in with both feet. Now that I use the system I have become a proponent of it. However it does have its doubters. The two biggest questions I get is “fine, I made an account now what?” and “what is it for?”. I find it is useful for the basic reason of connecting with old friends seeing what they are up to and catching a glimpse of their life. Now I will say that is the obvious reason. I mean that is what it was originally for. Some people call it something slightly different, networking. I do like the connecting of friends but the question always comes up “why not just use email?”. Well for two basic reasons, I rarely email just to catch up. I usually have a question or I need to give some info out. I can throw a pun out into the Facebook universe and people can just “like it” without having to say anything. This is nice because you get to say “hey I like your thought, joke, idea…. but I have nothing to add to it.” I just well like the statement. I do have a second reason I really like Facebook. It is something called crowd sourcing. This is just a quick way of saying that I am going to ask a whole lot of people for information. Let’s say I run out of ideas for the blog or I am working on a class and I just can’t seem to pull it together, well I can ask all my friends, contacts, what I should write. Because they are all at different point in their life and have different experience I may well get a take from them that I would never think of. In a local way I can get quick information as well. Not too long ago we were hanging out at the house. I was on my computer (I know big surprise right?) and the house began to shake. There was a sound like thunder but it was a clear night. Frankly we were freaked out. It sounded like the world was about to end. So I quickly jumped on Facebook and asked did anyone else hear the noise and feel the rumble. ... Tue, 14 Dec 2010 13:44:00 +0100 892663 http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/dec/14/hollywood-black-list-best-unproduced-scripts Wizards, zombies and Jackie Kennedy star on list of finest films you didn't see this yearFancy catching a taut drama about Jackie Kennedy's fight to preserve JFK's legacy in the seven days immediately following his death? Or perhaps a romantic comedy with the legendary title: Your Bridesmaid is a Bitch? Both stories could well find their names into cinemas, along with another 74, after making it on to the 2010 "Black List" of the best unproduced screenplays in Hollywood.This year's list was revealed yesterday by its compiler, film executive Franklin Leonard. It consists of the screenplays which a team of more than 300 movie producers most liked but that did not end up making it into cinemas by the end of the year. "The Black List is a snapshot of the collective taste of the people who develop, produce, and release theatrical feature films in the Hollywood studio system and the mainstream independent system," said Leonard on website blcklst.com.The list is often a useful indicator of upcoming film-making trends, and this year is no exception. The mashup genre, which began with the forthcoming film adaptation of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, is well represented with the likes of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, Boy Scouts vs Zombies and the delightful-sounding Fucking Jane Austen, in which two friends angry at Jane Austen for creating unrealistic romantic expectations among modern-day women get sent back in time to the 19th century. "The only way for them to return home is for one of them to get Jane Austen to fall in love and sleep with him," reports the list.There are also indications of Hollywood's continuing obsession with famous historical and cultural figures. The list is topped by writer Wes Jones's screenplay College Republicans, which centres on aspiring politician Karl Rove's "real-life" dirty campaign for national College Republican chairman under the guidance of Lee Atwater, his campaign manager. ... Tue, 14 Dec 2010 11:21:39 +0100 892703 http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/amazon-says-it-has-sold-millions-of-kindles-beat-out-all-of-2009-sales-in-just-last-73-days/ Found via Engadget and The Bookseller: Amazon makes another remarkably vague announcement of product sales. Calling the Kindle “far and away our bestselling gift item”, the Amazon Kindle Team posts to the Kindle Community forum that Thanks to you, in just the first 73 days of this holiday quarter, we’ve already sold millions of our all-new Kindles with the latest E Ink Pearl display. In fact, in the last 73 days, readers have purchased more Kindles than we sold during all of 2009. We’re grateful for and energized by the overwhelming customer response. This type of announcement always reminds me of the joke about the lost hot air ballooning physicists who asked a jogger where they were. After a few minutes, the jogger replied, “You’re in a balloon!” One physicist said to the other, "Just our luck to run into a mathematician" "How do you know he was a mathematician?" asked the other. "Well, in the first place he took a long time to answer; second, his answer was 100% correct, and third, it was totally useless." There’s no reason not to assume that Amazon is being completely truthful when it says it has sold “millions”, or that it has sold more this holiday season than in all of 2009. It sure would be nice if they would be a little more specific, but somehow I just don’t think that’s in the cards. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Tue, 14 Dec 2010 10:05:00 +0100 892612 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DepravedLibrarian/~3/xptXayx2Wf8/ Tagged: cats, humor (Source: Depraved Librarian) Tue, 14 Dec 2010 01:11:44 +0100 892578 http://marklindner.info/blog/2010/12/13/borges-seven-nights/ Seven nightsJorge Luis Borges; New Directions Pub. Corp. 2009WorldCat•LibraryThing•Google Books•BookFinder   I enjoyed this slim volume of essays based on seven lectures Borges gave in Buenos Aires between June and August 1977. There is a short introduction by Alistair Reid which provides some context and historical information on the lectures. Then the seven essays, in this order: The Divine Comedy, Nightmares, The Thousand and One Nights, Buddhism, Poetry, The Kabbalah, and Blindness.  Some of them are, of course, better than others but all of them are worth reading. This is the 6th book in the 12 Books, 12 Months Challenge that I finished. (Source: Off the Mark) Mon, 13 Dec 2010 20:44:14 +0100 893328 http://www.lisnews.org/kick_ass_librarian_funniest_video_about_librarians_you039ll_see_today So apparently you see the public library, our temple of shared learning, the repository of thousands of years of intellectual inquiry as a source of paper weights... The Next Time You Need An Airplane Book Go To Borders Like The Rest Of The Sheep (Source: LISNews - Librarian And Information Science News) Mon, 13 Dec 2010 17:46:01 +0100 893530 http://lisnews.org/kick_ass_librarian_funniest_video_about_librarians_you039ll_see_today So apparently you see the public library, our temple of shared learning, the repository of thousands of years of intellectual inquiry as a source of paper weights... The Next Time You Need An Airplane Book Go To Borders Like The Rest Of The Sheep (Source: LISNews.org) Mon, 13 Dec 2010 17:46:01 +0100 892486 http://lisnews.org/computers_libraries_stamp_them_out "It should be stamped out '...the computer is not for library use; that all the promises offered in its name are completely fraudulent; and that not only is it extremely expensive compared to other methods at this time, but that it will become increasingly expensive in the future; that it has been wrapped so completely in an aura of unreason that fine intelligences are completely uprooted when talking about it; that its use in a library weakens the library as a whole by draining off large sums of money for a small return; and that it should be stamped out." –Ellsworth Mason, "Along the Academic Way," LJ, May 15, 1971" (See Also:'The great gas bubble prick't; or, Computers revealed' by a Gentleman of Quality [Ellsworth Mason] in College and Research Libraries, 32 (May 1971): 183-196.) (Source: LISNews.org) Mon, 13 Dec 2010 17:04:35 +0100 892489 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/dec/13/10-best-perfect-comic-novels Robert McCrum chooses his favourite English literary comediesIn last week's Spectator, the journalist and author Marcus Berkmann, selecting his books of the year, observed that "every compulsive reader is on a quest", and confided that his was for "the perfect comic novel". This, wrote Berkmann, explained why he had about 80 PG Wodehouse books on his shelves, "a good quarter of which must be as near perfection as makes no difference".This caught my eye. I published a life of Wodehouse in 2004, for which I read some 100 Wodehouse titles, including many collections of short stories. Some of his novels (I wouldn't estimate it as high as 20) are indeed close to perfection. Heavy Weather, The Code of the Woosters, Uncle Fred in the Springtime, Hot Water and Thank You, Jeeves are all touched with greatness.Wodehouse, a comic master dedicated to making his readers laugh, is a special case. Still, the English tradition has many comic novels, and Berkmann's provocative little paragraph got me thinking. Setting PGW to one side, which titles would I include in a top 10 of English literary comedy? A note to international readers: this has to be a strictly English catalogue. The American comic tradition is quite different. Not better or worse – just different. For the purposes of this discussion, then, I exclude Twain, and – because he is a special case – Wodehouse. So here's my list, a pre-Christmas cracker, in chronological order:Lawrence Sterne: The Life and Opinions of Tristram ShandyJane Austen: Northanger AbbeyThomas Love Peacock: Headlong HallCharles Dickens: The Pickwick PapersRL Stevenson: The Wrong BoxJerome K Jerome: Three Men in a BoatEvelyn Waugh: Decline and FallGraham Greene: Travels with My AuntKingsley Amis: Lucky JimHanif Kureishi: The Buddha of SuburbiaI'd also make a plea to include the Stories of Saki (HH Munro), which are small masterpieces of satire. ... Mon, 13 Dec 2010 14:48:21 +0100 892441 http://www.teleread.com/paul-biba/book-camp-ny-jim-hanas-on-diy-ebooks-by-the-numbers-a-case-study/ Here are my notes on the presentation made by Jim Hanas. Jim is the author of the short story collection When they Cried. He wanted to give some actual number of where his book actually sold. Started as journalist and trade writer. Director of Social Media for NYC tourism agency and so obsessed with metrics. 1999, first short story published in print. $750 is total amount made writing fiction in his lifetime. Threat 0f not having readers is hollow threat. Threat of not having readers is more real. 2006 did first ebook stories and gave them away for free. The stories are an asset and regular publishing would want you to “save’ it until it can be published in a journal, etc.. For first ebook: Used Manybooks, Wattpad, Scribd, Bookglutton,Feedbooks and Smashwords. Manybooks (2007), 500 downloads by 9/09 12 downloads/month; Bookkglutton (2008), 819 BookGlutton (2009)downloads by 9/09; 529 Stanza downloads 112 downloads/month Wattpad (2007) 1,934 views by 9/09 but no stats on downloads Scribd (3008) 3,259 views by 9/09, 29 downloads Feedbooks (2009) 997 downloads by 9/09 142 downloads/month They win in discoverability and portability. Feedbooks was fastest to 1000 downloads Smashwords, (late 2009) 75 downloads/month 2010 to date gives a total of 3,103 downloads with Feedbooks giving the most at 1,857, Bookglutton second with 657 and Smashwords third 467 If want to charge for it recommends that go to Amazon. Led to ebook being published by ECW, a Canadian publisher, and a $500 advance, 10% of gross sales and retail price is $9.95. They only bought digital rights and he retains print rights. Spent $1997 in marketing the book and revenues were $940 in whole for about $1,000. Lessons learn: Google ads are tough for books, expect of pay $.30 to $.50 per click on Facebook and Goodreads, hunt for value with direct ad buys. HTML Giant was best marketing outlet. ... Mon, 13 Dec 2010 14:13:04 +0100 892513 http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2010/dec/13/chinua-achebe-life-in-writing 'Nigeria is once again on the brink of a precipice. We have to face up to our responsibilities before it is too late'In January 1966 Chinua Achebe attended a meeting of the newly founded Society of Nigerian Authors. His 1958 debut novel, Things Fall Apart, had made him a literary celebrity abroad and an influential public intellectual at home. But six years after the celebrations and optimism that marked Nigerian independence, he says there were already "far too many indications that we might not be going to have a good time. There was theft, corruption and even some violence. It wasn't yet a complete failure, and we still thought we could get things right. But the SNA was sort of a trade union. We thought it would keep us writers safe."The meeting that night was delayed because one of the members was late. "And then he burst through the door holding a book and shouting that I was a prophet. 'Everything in the book is happening,' he said, 'except the coup.'" The book was Achebe's fourth novel, A Man of the People, which was due to be published in London a few days later. Despite being set in an unnamed African state, it was clearly a satire on post-independence Nigeria detailing the greed and vanity of the slide into corruption and the cynical lip service paid to traditional values by aspirant politicians on the make. "I'd ended the book with a coup," Achebe explains, "which was ridiculous because Nigeria was much too big a country to have a coup, but it was right for the novel. That night we had a coup." The prime minister was murdered, along with key regional politicians and members of their families, as elements from the military took control. "And any confidence we had that things could be put right were smashed. That night is something we have never really got over."The eerie prescience of Achebe's novel led to him being accused of having prior knowledge of the coup by the authorities. ... Mon, 13 Dec 2010 08:00:02 +0100 892431 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/dec/13/celebrity-memoirs-bestsellers-autobiography-christmas One celebrity memoir made our reviewer cry – but the rest just bored him to tears. What would reading 11 of them in four days do to his brain?Hunter S Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas famously begins: "We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold." The first sentence of The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath, goes like this: "It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York."But never mind all that. Life & Laughing is the autobiography of Michael McIntyre, the 34-year-old comedian who is now arguably as successful as any standup has ever been. At the time of writing, it has sold 169,210 copies. People like it; at my local WH Smith, it seems to be selling like cut-price gold. It starts: "I am writing this on my new 27-inch iMac. I have ditched my PC and gone Mac . . . It's gorgeous and enormous and I bought it especially to write my book (the one you're reading now)."While we're here, consider also the enticing kick-off passage of My Story, by Dannii Minogue: "Having a baby; joyful, a quiet celebration with family. An intimate and magical moment of discovery shared with your partner. Hmmm . . . I wish!" She goes on: "The car is stuck in rainy London traffic and, as usual, I'm running on what some of my closer friends would call 'Minogue Time', which basically means I'm late." This does not quite get me hooked, though I persevere. But more of that later.To begin The Woman I Was Born To Be, that blessed national treasure Susan Boyle goes for a gnomic statement of the obvious: "My name is Susan Boyle." Cheryl Cole's Through My Eyes commences no less prosaically – "In 2009, we decided to take a break from Girls Aloud. During this time an opportunity came for me to make a solo album" – but it's essentially a picture book, so maybe I should leave off. ... Mon, 13 Dec 2010 07:59:01 +0100 892432 http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2010/dec/12/jd-salinger-obituary-by-lillian-ross American author JD Salinger died, aged 91, on 27 January 2010. Here, his long-standing friend Lillian Ross, a staff writer at the New Yorker since 1945, tells of the generous author who could keep her laughing for hoursThe two greatest American writers of my time are Ernest Hemingway and JD Salinger. Both have crossed from the 20th century into the 21st with their originality, substance and staying power intact. As a reporter and a friend – privileged to dabble in their area – it has been thrilling for me to watch, at first hand, the unique genius in both writers revealed more and more sharply over the years.Both writers had a sense of humour all their own – surprising, inimitable, in conversation, in letters, as well as in their work. Salinger could keep me on the phone for hours, laughing into exhaustion, covering everything and everybody around us. He loved to read and he loved to write. Hemingway would say he loved the writing part, "but not what came afterwards". What came afterwards for him was years of inexplicable censure for his having the courage and genius to give us lasting reading pleasure and enlightenment.I have never understood the "afterwards" part, regarding both Hemingway and Salinger. We have seen dismaying efforts to bring Salinger down, too. Salinger loved the people he created and was protective of them until the day he died. He gave us Holden Caulfield. He gave us the Glass family. So why would some "literary" critics take such a censorious tone about Salinger's personal life?He was a delight to know, as a friend and a colleague since 1950, just before the publication of The Catcher in the Rye. He figured out his personal life, winding up with a nearly 30-year-long marriage, children, and grandchildren. He lived quietly in New Hampshire, enjoyed church suppers, never bothered anybody, and wanted to be left alone with his work. He was the smartest writer I had ever met and the most generous. ... Sun, 12 Dec 2010 00:06:30 +0100 892112 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/dec/12/genre-versus-literary-fiction-edward-docx The Millennium trilogy and Da Vinci Code authors sell millions – but according to novelist Edward Docx their books are 'amateurish'. Here, he argues that even good genre fiction doesn't bear comparison with works of true literary meritOn my way back to London the other day, I was clawing my way toward the buffet car when I noticed with a shock that more or less the entire train carriage was reading… novels. This cheered me up immensely: partly because I have begun to fear that we are living in some kind of Cowellian nightmare, and partly because I make a good part of my living writing them. Where were the Heats and the Closers, I wondered? The Maxims and the Cosmos? Where the iPads, the iPhones, the Blackberrys and the Game Boys, the Dingoos and the Zunes? Why neither the ding of texts, nor the dong of mail? Barely anyone was even on the phone, for Christ's sake. They were all reading. Quietly, attentively, reading.My cheer modulated into something, well, less cheerful (but still quite cheerful) when I realised that they were all, in fact, reading the same book. Yes, you've guessed it: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo who Played With Fire and who, some time later we are lead to believe, Kicked the Hornet's Nest. In the next three carriages it was the same story – men, women, toddlers. A glance out of the window revealed that even the cows were at it – nose deep, hay forgotten. And when, finally, I arrived at the buffet car, I was greeted with a sigh and a how-dare-you raise of the eyebrows. Why? Because in order to effectively conjure my cup of lactescent silt into existence, the barrista in question would have to put down his… Stieg Larsson.In terms of sales, 2010 has been the year of the Larsson. Again. His three books have been the three bestselling fiction titles on Amazon UK. Along with Dan Brown, he has conquered the world. ... Sun, 12 Dec 2010 00:06:03 +0100 892111 http://www.readersclub.org/reviews/tresults.asp?id=7757 by King, Stephen According to Stephen King, his stories are about “ordinary people in extraordinary situations.” His vivid characters tell their grisly stories in flash back, interspersing historical events, social commentary, dark humor, and pop culture. A farmer in 1922 Nebraska confesses to murdering his wife. In Big Driver, Tess, author of the Willow Grove Knitting Society mystery series, speaks to the Chicopee Library Brown Baggers. A librarian recommends a life-changing short-cut for her drive home. In Fair Extension, Dave Streeter makes a Faustian bargain to cure his cancer. Darcy Anderson makes a startling discovery about her husband, Bob, in A Good Marriage. The stories are reminiscent of Edgar Allan Poe or Flannery O’Connor in their imagery and irony. King includes an afterword explaining what inspired each story. - reviewed by Megan, Main Library, PLCMC (Source: Reader's Club's Latest) Sat, 11 Dec 2010 11:19:59 +0100 892009 http://librarychronicles.blogspot.com/2010_12_01_archive.html#6441323477481143795 Let it be noted that we had every intention of delivering last week's football post on time. But then, even when that didn't happen, we were sure we were going to do it Friday morning which would be better than we've done most of this season.But then on Thursday night Menckles bought us some nice wine and then things went downhill and then all of Friday turned into this.And so here I am with just a few hours to throw something together before running down to Acme for more liquor. In which case, I'm not even going to waste time with the regular opening joke or rambling tangent. Instead, maybe just enjoy the Gregg Williams animated GIF provided by Varg for the general benefit of mankind.Saints vs Bengals: (Stolen photos from TP NOLA.com gallery. Animated GIF rudely hot-linked to Varg's site unless that becomes a problem)Pants Factor: What the hell is going on here? This is, what 6? 20? wins in a row in the black pants? Okay okay you've made your freaking point, guys. But seriously, can we ditch the pants anyway? They don't look any less stupid.BTW, Black pants WITH fanny pack? Worst decision ever.Also, props to Sean Payton for going with the hoodie this week. In football fashion parlance, the hoodie is sort of an anti-windbreaker in that it's how we identify the coaches who aren't complete morons. Good Ironbutt Chris Ivory was a beast Sunday (15 carries 117 yards 2 touchdowns) Ivory's 636 yards leads the Saints and all NFL rookies in rushing this season. Ivory is one of a handful of undrafted free agent running backs currently leading their teams including overall leader Arian Foster of Houston. The Saints expect to make the roster stronger by adding another undrafted running back to the mix this week. All of which begs the question, what exactly is the NFL draft for in the first place? Actually let's save that one for later. ... Sat, 11 Dec 2010 05:00:00 +0100 893343 http://collectingmythoughts.blogspot.com/2010/12/still-taking-applications.html Almost 5 years ago I wrote a blog about the perfect daughter-in-law. Someone today responded and said she was having issues with her mother-in-law and would look at my list for help. Well, apparently my ideas weren't very good because I still don't have a daughter-in-law. I say that as a joke, because obviously, I have no say in the matter. I suspect it's my son . . . he just can't get over the idea that he wants to be wrong only 50% of the time. Can you imagine? (Source: Collecting my Thoughts) Sat, 11 Dec 2010 05:00:00 +0100 892036 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/dec/11/eric-brown-science-fiction-review Lightborn by Tricia Sullivan | Aurorarama by Jean-Christophe Valtat | The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson | Amortals by Matt ForbeckLightborn, by Tricia Sullivan (Orbit, £8.99)Lightborn – or Shine – is a system of information technology beamed directly into the user's brain, conferring virtual education and entertainment. When a dose of "bad" shine finds its way into the heads of the citizens of Los Sombres, adults suffer bouts of violence and mental breakdown. Children below the age of puberty cannot access Shine and so are unaffected by the malaise, and the novel follows two teenagers as they attempt to come to terms with the breakdown of society, look after the dysfunctional adults, and work out exactly what is happening. Sullivan is brilliant at presenting convincing near-future scenarios peopled by heart-breakingly real characters – Roksana and Xavier are made to suffer terribly throughout the narrative – and leaves the explication of the technology in the background while concentrating on the human consequences of its malfunction. Recommended.Aurorarama, by Jean-Christophe Valtat (Melville House, £17.99)French writer Valtat's third novel is gloriously retro literary steampunk set in the Arctic city of New Venice in 1908. The city, founded on utopian ideals by the Seven Sleepers, now in cryogenic hibernation, is run by the draconian Council of Seven and their ever-so-polite henchmen, the Gentlemen of the Night. They're out to suppress Inuit independence, the suffragette movement and the increasing use of psychedelic drugs. Pitched against these autocratic forces are Brentford Orsini, keeper of the city's greenhouses, and louche, cynical Professor Gabriel d'Allier, through whose interleaved viewpoints this story of political intrigue is told. Aurorarama is a magnificent achievement, balancing serious intent with arch humour. ... Sat, 11 Dec 2010 00:06:37 +0100 891875 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/dec/11/comfort-joy-india-knight-review Laura Barnett celebrates the comic potential of family get-togethersIf you're allergic to tinsel, come out in hives at the idea of spending each 25 December in the company of your nearest and not-so-dearest, and think Ebenezer Scrooge had a point, then you should probably look away now. Comfort and Joy, the third novel by India Knight, is in love with Christmas, and all its glorious Technicolor traditions of overeating, over-imbibing and over-exposure to an endless stream of friends, relatives and hangers-on.The action takes place over three consecutive festive seasons. In part one, set in 2009, we meet our heroine, twice-married mother-of-three Clara Dunphy, cutting short some last-minute Christmas shopping on London's Oxford Street for the wild, solitary abandon of a champagne cocktail at the Connaught hotel, where she meets a handsome stranger, known thenceforth only as "the man from the Connaught". Part two segues to Christmas Day 2010, where we find Clara entertaining disturbingly sexual thoughts about her turkey as she prepares dinner for a motley set of friends and relations, the seating arrangements for whom would give Nigella Lawson a headache (among them are Clara's now-estranged husband and his mother, and her first husband and his mother). And in part three, set in 2011, we see the whole brood decamp to Marrakesh for a turkey-free but no less family-centred Christmas Day.Clara's idiosyncractic first-person narrative takes a little getting used to – it's riddled with posh exclamations like "yay" and "wahoo" – but her indefatigable enthusiasm for all things Christmassy quickly proves infectious. ... Sat, 11 Dec 2010 00:06:33 +0100 891877 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/dec/11/celebrity-memoirs-christmas-roundup John Dugdale discerns some palpable hits among the dudsLast year's showbiz autobiographies brought the genre into disrepute: the public sensibly shunned insipid efforts from TV stars they were assumed to adore; booksellers complained sales too often failed to match the hype because the market had been flooded with mediocrity; and the high dud-to-hit ratio forced chastened publishers to reassess the merits of flinging money annually at a handful of B-listers in the hope that one will produce a book that matches the million-selling success of Peter Kay's The Sound of Laughter.Expectations (and no doubt advances) are accordingly lower for the class of 2010, who have come up with a variety of responses to the perennial problem: how do you write about fame and other celebrities?Pre-fame only. Problem solved: you don't. A popular tactic, since it worked for Kay, which is this year best represented by Paul O'Grady. Even though The Devil Rides Out (Bantam, £20) is his second memoir, he's only just started to drag up as Lily Savage in its closing pages; yet he writes so well, and takes you so skilfully into disparate Merseyside and London subcultures, that few readers will feel cheated.Frustration is more likely with Michael McIntyre's chatty Life and Laughing (Michael Joseph, £20), as accepting that a book is confined to cataloguing youthful blushes and blunders is easier when that's a positive choice, not a disconcerting recourse. He says he aimed to include the years after his breakthrough but eventually realised that "writing about success is actually dull, so I deleted it". Simon Pegg should have taken the same decision in Nerd Do Well (Century, £18.99), as the film-obsessed comic's gushing when he meets Spielberg, Lucas et al in the second half swiftly becomes trying.Protracted press release. You Only Live Once (Century, £18. ... Sat, 11 Dec 2010 00:06:26 +0100 891882 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/dec/11/critics-recommendations-fiction-books-presents Justine Jordan rounds up our critics' recommendationsWhile Jonathan Franzen's family epic Freedom (Fourth Estate, £20) will be the novel under most Christmas trees, and David Nicholls's bittersweet romance One Day (Hodder, £7.99) the paperback to stuff into stockings, our critics found plenty of other gems to recommend over the reading year.It was a great 12 months for the comic novel, with Howard Jacobson's uproarious investigation of grief, friendship and British Jewishness, The Finkler Question (Bloomsbury, £18.99), a Man Booker winner that surprised and pleased in equal measure. Reviewer Alex Clark found it "a terrifying and ambitious novel, full of dangerous shallows and dark, deep water", bringing knockabout humour to bear on the most serious themes. Surely the year's most pleasurable read and now a Costa contender, Skippy Dies by Paul Murray (Hamish Hamilton, £13.99), charted teenage highs and lows at an Irish boarding school: Patrick Ness called it " a rare tragicomedy that's both genuinely tragic and genuinely comedic".Christopher Tayler applauded Ian McEwan's "elegant and surprising" response to global warming in Solar (Jonathan Cape, £13.99): "instead of applying doom and gloom, he reaches for a lighter, more comic mode than usual". Meanwhile, Alfred Hickling fell in love with Tiffany Murray's Diamond Star Halo (Portobello, £12.99), a "glam-rock Dodie Smith" extravaganza about coming of age in a rural recording studio in the 70s. Moving from Wales to San Francisco, later in the year he found Armistead Maupin back to his "rapturous best" with Mary Ann in Autumn (Doubleday, £17.99), revisiting the Tales of the City cast 20 years on.Lloyd Jones followed his 2007 hit Mr Pip with a novel that Joanna Briscoe described as "extraordinary". Hand Me Down World (John Murray, £14. ... Sat, 11 Dec 2010 00:06:12 +0100 891864 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/audio/2010/dec/10/children-s-books-michael-rosen-andy-stanton As the countdown to Christmas begins we look at some of the books that would make the best presents for children. We take personal tips from our Twitter followers, and get the expert view from Guardian children's books editor Julia Eccleshare.We find out how humour makes the words go down in an interview with Andy Stanton, author of the best-selling Mr Gum books, and we talk politics with the poet and broadcaster Michael Rosen, who explains why some books that we, as adults, remember with affection might not be right for the children of today.Reading List:Mr Gum and the Secret Hideout by Andy Stanton (Egmont, 8+)Mother Goose Treasury by Raymond Briggs, (Puffin, 0+)We're Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury (Walker, 2+) Cave Baby by Julia Donaldson and Emily Gravett (Macmillan, 3+)Aesop's Fables retold by Fiona Waters, illustrated by Fulvio Testa (Andersen Press, 5+)Amazing Pop Up Machines by Robert Crowther (Walker, 6+)Wild Alphabet (Kingfisher, 6+)Alienology (Templar, 8+)Withering Tights by Louise Rennison (HarperCollins (9+)Letters from an Alien Schoolboy by Ros Asquith (Piccadilly, 9+)Our tweeters recommend: Persephone: A Journey from Winter to Spring by Sally Pomme Clayton and Virginia Lee (Frances Lincoln)Green Knowe series by Lucy M Boston (Faber)Noah Barleywater Runs Away by John Boyne (David Fickling)Ottoline at Sea by Chris Riddell (Macmillan)Dark Is Rising sequence by Susan Cooper (Bodley Head)Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff (OUP)Claire ArmitsteadJulia EccleshareMichelle PauliTim Maby (Source: Guardian Unlimited Books) Fri, 10 Dec 2010 16:17:07 +0100 891862 http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2010/dec/10/the-joy-of-six-football-cartoons From Hot Shot Hamish to Billy the Fish, via Johnny Dexter, here are half a dozen of the most memorable1) Hot Shot HamishAsk anybody to name a cartoon football character and, a hundred times out of a hundred, they'll come up with Roy of the Rovers first. But let's get straight down to the nitty gritty here: Roy Race was a bampot. If he and his mate Blackie Gray weren't taking themselves so very seriously, and frowning their way through the strip as they pompously sermonised over "issues" – Race, for example, once refused to play for England because he didn't like the manager's tactical set-up, a self-regarding stunt not even John Terry would think of pulling, the over-inflated sack of hot air – they were projecting their Little Englandisms on to foreign nations. Over the years, they worried themselves over Italians cheating, Americans spying, and Indigenous Australians (or "Abbos", as the appropriately named "Racey" liked to call them) spiking them with drugged darts. Installing a myopic island mentality into generations of English kids, simple extrapolation proves conclusively that Race was a huge factor in the FA's inability to land the 2018 World Cup. So we're all agreed: Roy Race is a virulent xenophobe whose very existence has cost the country 18 million quid.However his stablemate in Tiger comic, Hamish Balfour, brought from a small Hebridean island to play for Princes Park in the Scottish Premier Division, was a true hero. Unlike Race, Balfour, a strapping long-haired powerhouse of a striker – essentially Andy McCarroll – had no interest in belittling Johnny Foreigner. He was only concerned with scoring goals, terrorising keepers with his Hot Shot, and making sure his Daddie didn't get into too much trouble off the pitch. ... Fri, 10 Dec 2010 11:51:32 +0100 891692 http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/theatreblog/2010/dec/09/steve-martin-comedian The comedian has been criticised for daring to talk about art rather than do gags. Why aren't comics allowed to do serious?I saw an episode of House for the first time recently. I didn't really follow the story, I just found Hugh Laurie spellbinding. I could tell the show was highly dramatic, brooding, sardonic, and all that. But – well, how can anyone take it seriously? After all, this is Hugh Laurie. Prince George. Bertie Wooster. Fry and Laurie. Cover that dopey face with as much designer stubble as you like, but I still expect it to crease into a goofy smile and announce: "I'm absolutely top-hole, sir, with a yin and a yang and yippie-dee-doo." Last week, Steve Martin encountered a similar response from his audience, and the rest is ignominy. Martin was in conversation at New York's 92nd Street Y cultural centre, discussing his new novel An Object of Beauty with scholar and journalist Deborah Solomon. Halfway through the event, a Y staff member handed Solomon a note curtly demanding that she "discuss Steve's career". Audiences watching the interview by across the US had complained that the conversation was about art (the novel's subject) rather than showbiz. Attendees later had their tickets refunded on the basis that "last night's event", according to the Y's executive director, "did not meet the standard of excellence you have come to expect from [the venue]".Martin is now fending off accusations that he was, and is, boring – but his crime was simply to be serious, which isn't what we expect from comedians. Martin is not alone in attracting suspicion for writing a novel; standups' exertions in creative writing are often greeted with scepticism. And notice the recent confusion in America when TV comic Jon Stewart held his Rally to Restore Sanity in advance of the mid-term elections. ... Thu, 09 Dec 2010 13:22:54 +0100 891567 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/09/judging-pop-lyrics-without-music Mocking a song by looking at its lyrics without the music is like judging a painting on a section you've cut outIn a piece published on this website last Friday, Johnny Sharp diagnosed a phenomenon he calls DAMPE, or, the "Deep and Meaningless Pop Epic". To support his theory, Sharp picks out a selection of "vaguely triumphant, vaguely uplifting" lyrics from (some hard targets coming up) bands such as Boyzone, Westlife, Duran Duran and Take That.But Sharp's sights are a little off, and his conceit – that we can sensibly judge songs largely on the basis of their lyrics in isolation – is nonsense.The lyrics he mentions, for the most part, seem to bear all the hallmarks of the sort of widescreen vacancy indicated by the withering DAMPE label. We read of the familiar long roads, lost loves, analogical flowers, and such other platitudes. But as any reader prepared to exercise a little judgment or a little charity will know, lyrics were not composed to be read in this detached way, nor are they received as such under normal conditions of convenience. When words are set to music their syntax is captured and drastically decoded. Everything depends on context. We are moved when Robert Johnson sings, on repeat, "Oh, baby don't you want to go", both because we know the weighty biography attached to that artist, and because we hearken to the grain and the tremor with which they are delivered.The musical elevates the lyrical here, which latter in any case simply can't occur without the former. Lacking music, they would simply be words. In a different setting, the Robert Johnson lyrics could sound gauche. Similarly, it is conceivable that the line "Christmas night, another fight", could be the site of some sort of deep and meaningful musical communication. At the head of Coldplay's new single, however, charged with such a limp delivery and such a stale and pale harmonic setting as these words are, they simply sound annoying. ... Thu, 09 Dec 2010 12:07:09 +0100 891568 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TechsourceBlog/~3/C5iHw5zM4ww/first-impressions-on-googles-new-bookstore.html The Google ebookstore (http://books.google.com/ebooks) officially opened on Monday.  At launch, Google ebooks are available only in the U.S., but they plan to go international in 2011.  On Day One Google claimed to offer the world's largest selection of ebooks, with “...nearly 3 million free ebooks and hundreds of thousands of titles that are ready for purchase.”  If and when the dust settles on the Google Book Settlement, those numbers should rise substantially.  Google ebooks may be read on any computer with a browser with Javascript enabled.  Evidently, offline reading via the browser interface is not currently allowed, but the browser interface has several nice features, such as adjusting the text size, the font type, the line spacing, and the justification of the text block (left-only or left-and-right).  You even can toggle between a reflowable display of the text and the scanned version.  Both views seem to give real page numbers that can be cited and found even in the pulpy versions of these books.  Google ebooks also may be read on Android devices, many iThingies, and most dedicated ereaders. The Android app will run on Android devices running 2.1 (Eclair) or later.  There's a QR code on the webpage for the Android app that will send the app directly to your Android device.  Reading on an Android device makes offline reading feasible. The i-app is compatible with iPhones, iPads, and iPod Touches running iOS 3.0 or later.  It also allows offline reading.  If you own or use a dedicated ereader device, Google ebooks are readable on these devices.  Both PDF and EPUB file formats may be downloaded and transferred, either unprotected or protected by Adobe Content Server 4 software.  If you transfer content to your portable computer via a desktop computer, you will need to be running Adobe Digital Editions on your desktop PC or Mac. ... Wed, 08 Dec 2010 15:03:19 +0100 891664 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TameTheWeb/~3/IUPzVkMuDnU/ Brian Kelly writes: Dave has demonstrated his impact within the wider community in two areas.  Dave has been active in supporting the Mashed Libraries series of one day events  whoch have aimed to to “bring together interested people and doing interesting stuff with libraries and technology“. The original idea was conceived by Owen Stephens in a blog post on “Mashed Libraries? Would you be interested?” on 1 July 2008. The second response was from Dave, who showed his enthusiasm together with an example of his normal self-deprecating humour: “I’ve love to see a library unconference in the UK… I’m just too lazy to try and organise one myself! Count me in and, if nothing else, I can guarentee there’ll be two of use sitting in a room with our laptops!“. Dave certainly wasn’t lazy in his support for the events as two of the six events have been held at Dave’s host institution, the University of Huddersfield: Mash Oop North on 7 July 2009 and Chips and Mash, on 30 July 2010. Before Dave got involved with Mashed Libraries he was demonstrating the value which can be gained from mashing up library data. As you might expect from someone who is committed to sharing best practices across a wide community Dave has a blog (which was launched way back in May 2005) . On the blog you can read his posts on usage data, which includes a post entitled ”2008 — The Year of Making Your Data Work Harder” in which Dave described his “code primarily designed for our new Student Portal — course specific new book list RSS feeds“. Dave was just giving talks about ways of exploiting data, he was writing code and implementing services which demonstrated the value of the approaches he was encouraging the library community to adopt. ... Wed, 08 Dec 2010 13:13:21 +0100 891324 http://www.sla.org.uk/blg-bill-bryson-wins-2010-educational.php The Authors' Licensing & Collecting Society (ALCS) and the Society of Authors today announced that Bill Bryson had been awarded the 2010 Educational Writers' Award for A Really Short History of Nearly Everything, abridged and edited by Felicia Law. The award was made at the All Party Writers Group (APWG) Winter Reception at the House of Commons by Lord Hill, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Schools, who presented a £2,000 cheque to the winners.The 2010 Award focused on books for 12 -18 year olds published in 2009 & 2010. A Really Short History of Nearly Everything (Doubleday) beat off strong competition from a shortlist that was described as "highlighting humour, scholarship and lateral thinking". Fellow shortlistees for 2010 included: Ben Crystal for Shakespeare on Toast (Icon Books); John Farndon for Do You Think You're Clever? (Icon Books) and Liz Strachan for A Slice of Pi (Constable).ALCS and the Society of Authors created this award in 2008 to ‘celebrate educational writing that inspires creativity and encourages students to read widely and build up their understanding of a subject beyond the requirements of exam specifications'.  It is the only UK Award that focuses on educational non-fiction.  It is made annually for an outstanding example of traditionally published single volume work, with or without illustration, for the specified age group.  The age group alternates each year; this year's focus was on works for 12 - 18 year olds and in 2011 the focus returns to works for 5 - 11 year olds.  The 2010 judging panel comprised three educational experts:  school librarian Maggy Campbell, teacher Louise Gerrard and writer Stewart Ross.The forthcoming deadline for submission for the 2011 award for the 5 - 11 year age group is 1st June 2011.  For further details please see the website. ... Wed, 08 Dec 2010 10:19:18 +0100 892258 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/LawLibrarianBlog/~3/blg0OS49Rhc/a-tsa-protest-woman-arrives-at-airport-security-wearing-nothing-but-.html Just about every time I go through airport security -- shoes coming off, belt, coat, pants pockets being emptied, you know the drill -- I usually joke with others in line that one of these times I'm going to just... (Source: Law Librarian Blog) Wed, 08 Dec 2010 05:00:00 +0100 891808