Daily Thoughts 5/17/2009

Stage adaptation of It Can't Happen Here a novel by Sinclair Lewis. WPA-- Works Project Administration

Daily Thoughts 5/17/2009

I've started reading Pop Goes the Library Using Pop Culture to Connect With Your Whole Community by Sophie Brookover and Elizabeth Burns. The book starts with the distinction between popular culture and high culture. I like to think of high culture as a source of philanthropy and prestige, and popular culture as a source of circulation and government money. Public libraries need both of them to survive in equal measure. Sometimes they meet in unusual ways. Oprah's Book Club is an example of how high culture and popular culture can intersect. Some of the selections; East of Eden by John Steinbeck, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, Love In the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez represent high culture.

I spent some more time reading Pop Goes The Library by Sophie Brookover and Elizabeth Burns at the laundromat. I usually sit and drink coffee while the laundry spins. I got up to the section on technology. My favorite part of the book are the quotes from practicing librarians at the ends of the chapters.

China Mieville has a new book coming out The City and The City. He is a very popular author for fantasy novels. I liked Un Lun Dun his young adult novels. I didn't like some of his other novels despite their popularity. I found some of the philosophy annoying. Allan Steele also has a new novel in his Coyote series, Coyote Horizon. I have enjoyed the series about colonization of an alien world.

I put the book, The Toyota Way by Jeffrey Liker on hold. I am interested in the idea when I was reading The Kaizen Way, that there is a logical way to integrate discontinuous innovation with continuous improvement.