Morning Thoughts

I was looking on Facebook and I came across something rather interesting. It is a newswire for librarians. It is basically a large collection of press releases from libraries and library companies. I think it is fairly new. http://www.liswire.com/ . I rather like the idea of it. It still needs a lot more coverage.

My day should be interesting today. Yesterday, I got to the subway and it was so packed that I could not get a seat. I had to stand all the way in. It is quite hard to read standing up. Hopefully, if I leave a few minutes earlier, I will get a seat today and be able to read on the subway. It was like being in a can of sardines. So many more people are taking the subway as gas prices are climbing much higher.

I work an hour earlier on Fridays. Today, it was a much nicer ride on the subway, peaceful compared to yesterday. I got to read some more of Steampunk. I enjoyed reading a kind of odd story by Joe Lansdale, The Steam Man of the Prairie and The Dark Rider which combines steampunk with westerns. It has all sorts of odd things in it, morlocks, a vampire, a steam man, and a few other odd surprises. Joe Lansdale is an author who I really enjoy reading. He writes, western horror, mysteries, steampunk, and graphic novels.
He has a myspace fanpage which lists his films and books. It is kind of entertaning.
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=240828807

I looked through the New York Times Bestseller list which we have as part of our library catalog and placed Bad money : reckless finance, failed politics, and the global crisis of American capitalism by Kevin Phillips on hold.

It is the afternoon. This morning, I went around checking for books with minor damage, torn covers, peeling spine labels, and other minor damage to be repaired in the reference area. The reference books are fairly clean right now. The shelving is in good order and looks neat.

Thinking back to steampunk, one of my favorite graphic novels is The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Kevin O'Neill. I think the storytelling is fantastic. It is set in alternate British Victoria populated with many of the genre favorites of old, Captain Nemo, Mina Harker, The Invisible Man, Allan Qatermain and others. The first volume deals with formation of the league and a battle between Fu Manchu and Professor Moriarty in London. The second volume in the series is even more outrageous. The league fights the invading martians who are like the martians from War of the Worlds. There is brief appearance by John Carter and Gulliver Jones on an alternate mars.

There is supposed to be a third volume in the series which hasn't come out yet. They did an interim story, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Black Dossier but none of our libraries purchased it. I am not going to shell out my own money to buy this. Maybe, I will get it eventually, I am not in a hurry.

I was looking at various blogs when I came across an interesting story at the OUP Blog about a gentleman living in a tiny apartment in Manhattan and plastering the floors and walls with pages from a dictionary. It looked interesting enough for me to mention it in my blog. I really enjoyed the story. http://blog.oup.com/2008/05/words-out-of-context/