Daily Thoughts 4/14/2010

Ian Fleming oil painting, 16 January 2009, Constance Vlahoulis, Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 2.0 Generic from Wikimedia.

Daily Thoughts 4/14/2010

I finished reading Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks by John Curran. I especially liked the short story at the end of the book, The Incident of the Dog's Ball. I also liked that she was Robert Grave's neighbor. The book was interesting to read. It was mainly a set of notes rearranged to give details on the different works she wrote. Agatha Christie was more than a mystery writer. She also wrote successful plays and radioscripts as well as wrote as a novelist under a pseudonym. This book has notes on almost all of her short stories, plays, and books. If you are an Agatha Christie fan it is well worth reading.

Alexander Jablokov, Brain Thief came in for me to read. It looks like a combination of a cyberpunk science fiction novel and a thriller.

I spent some time today looking at different library fundraising around the county. I also checked on the progress of shifting fiction books and short stories out of the fiction room.

I also spent a little time looking through the gift books. We had some new African American romance paperbacks which were donated to us with popular authors like Rochelle Alers and Brenda Jackson. We also got a few books on cd, including an unabridged CD of a Isabel Allende book.

A patron suggested that I read Chuck Klosterman, Eating the Dinosaur. He compared him to Hunter S. Thompson. I have put it on hold.

Today is the first National Book Mobile Day, April 14, 2010. Our book mobile went out today to do the rounds with the older adults. http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6726127.html

National Library Week 2010 America's Most Amazing Libraries from the Huffington Post http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/12/national-library-week-201_n_533978.html

Daily Thoughts 4/13/2010

Goya, Reading. 1820-1821. Oil on plaster mounted on canvas, 126 x 66 cm. Museo del Prado, Madrid.

Daily Thoughts 4/13/2010

I read some more of Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks. Agatha Christie would arrange her plot outlines using an initial alphabetical format, then switch the sections around. I found it interesting that in addition to plays and radio plays, she would also arrange mystery treasure hunts.

Today has been another quiet steady day. I picked up books for the Bookmobile which goes out on April 14, 2010. People wanted books on the navy, treasure diving, art, books by Anne Coulter, Danielle Steel, Nicholas Sparks, and romantic biographies. Comfortable books to reminesce on. They also wanted romance audiobooks, biographical audiobooks, and videos of masterpiece theatre mysteries like Miss Marple or Inspector Lewis.

I also placed orders for graphic novels. I looked at the Diamond Comic Distributors bestseller list and New York Times graphic novel bestseller list to pick out some popular graphic novels. Stephenie Meyers has a Twilight graphic novel and there is a Halo Helljumpers graphic novel written by Peter David.

I also spent some time looking at the Indienext Bestseller List and the Bestselling Science Fiction titles list from Locus Magazine this morning this morning as well as the Staff Picks section online on the Strand Bookstore and Powells books.

A copy of Linnea Sinclair, Rebels and Lovers came in for me to read. I also picked up a copy of Louise Erdrich, Shadow Tag.

Daily Thoughts 4/12/2010

Room 411 at the Pera Palas hotel in Istanbul, Turkey, the room where Agatha Christie wrote Murder on the Orient Express. Photo by Steve Hopson, November, 2004. See more photos at Steve Hopson Photography. Usage requires attribution to Steve Hopson Photography, www.stevehopson.com. Creative Commons Share A Like Attribution 2.5

Daily Thoughts 4/12/2010

I am reading Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks. I learned that Agatha Christie was a member of the Detection Club, a dinner group for British mystery writers. Dorothy L. Sayers and Anthony Berkeley were founding members. It included many distinguished British mystery writers like S.S. Van Dine and G. K. Chesterton.

We are looking at relabeling the shelves after the books have been shifted. The shifting is still happening in the storage area. It should make things easier when it gets done. We are also going to be adding a link to the ebooks page from the system as well as setting up a download station for ebooks, audiobooks, and other downloadable media.

I spent quite a bit of time reading various reviews from Kirkus Reviews and Publishers Weekly today and putting together orders for Wednesday.

I have been reading some more of Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks. There is a section which lists a number of mystery which influenced her writing: E.C. Bentley, G.K Chesterton, John Creasey, Rufus King, A.E.W. Mason, Edgar Allen Poe, and Dorothy Sayers. She also had a habit of using nursery rhymes as part of her plotting. She names many of her stories after nursery rhymes; Three Blind Mice, Four and Twenty Blackbirds, A Pocketful of Rye and some of her other stories are named after nursery rhymes.