Daily Thoughts

I have been reading a bit more of MBA In A Day. We have a new director at our library. She has a Masters in Administration. I am trying to figure out what exactly goes into the masters degree. Most librarians don't have administrative training. They tend to have a masters in library science. This creates a kind of odd distinction in our library. Understanding the strategies being used to change where I work should be quite helpful.

One of the books I requested has come in, The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie. I am looking forward to reading this. I haven't read any books by him yet. Many of his books were banned in Muslim countries for their content. He is supposed to write in the style of magical realism.

I had a chance to read the latest New York Times Book Review and look throught the various bestseller lists. I put a few more books on hold, America's Hidden History by Kenneth C. Davis, and American Nerd: The Story of My People by Benjamin Nugent. The title American Nerd has a very nice ring to it. It is very attention getting. That is why I became interested in the book almost immediately. Plus, I secretly harbor ambitions to nerdom, I am one of those outliers on the borders.

Reaper's Gale by Steven Erikson is in the catalog. There is a record but there are no copies attached to the record. This means I will eventually be able to put the book on hold. These things always are a matter of patience.

I also put Little Brother a new book by Cory Doctorow on hold. Cory Doctorow can be pretty radical sometimes. I am looking forward to reading something a bit different in this title. It is a young adult title.

For those of you who like pictures, I was looking at Pulp Gallery today, it has thousands of images of old pulp fiction covers. It can be quite intriguing. Spicey Adventure, Famous Detective, The Shadow, The Spider, Argosy, Doc Savage and many other covers are shown there. It really gives a sense of nostalgia for yesteryear.
http://picasaweb.google.com/pulpgallery

My Technorati favorites came back. My fans are back. Technorati is working again. It took about eight days. They were polite and fixed the problem.

Finding Books On Blogs

Sheherezade Illustration from The Arabian Nights by Edmund Dulac.

I have been wandering around the blogging world looking at various book titles. I've even had a few books suggested for me to read.

So far the following books have been suggested for me to read, Oil By Upton Sinclair. This was turned into the new movie "There Will Be Blood." I have requested this book from another library to read. Christine Vyrnon suggested this title.

Another book which was suggested was Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky. It is a classic thick Russian story. A little bit deep for my tastes right now. Bhaanu from http://playfullive.com/ recommended this title. He has a number of cartoons drawn on the sport cricket which are interesting. I wasn't sure where the blog was from until he told me he was from India.

I also saw two books which looked interesting, Wind Follower by Carole McDonnell. It is a first book, a fantasy novel by an African American woman author with strong spiritual content.

The other book which kind of struck my fancy was Rises the Night by Colleen Gleason. It is a lady vampire slayer romance set in Victorian times. I tried it out but it wasn't quite what I expected.

The final book which I am definitely going to read right now was suggested by Nezha at her blog

http://nezhab.blogspot.com/ Scheherezade Goes West. She gave a nice recommendation for my site. I appreciate it.

One of the reasons I am going to read this book has to do with who reads the blog. When I was looking at search statistics, a lot of the people using my blog according to Google are searching under the keywords: modern fairytales, urban legends, or myth. Scheherezade is the teller of the Arabian nights which is an appropriate fit for what people might be interested in who are reading the blog.

I am amazed by the number and variety of book blogs on the internet. There are a lot of books which I would never have seen if I had not been reading blogs.

A thought came across my mind. I wonder sometimes how people imagine me. Do I have glasses? Am I shushing people? There is a librarian action figure which is supposed to represent the typical librarian in many peoples minds. I rather like it, because somehow someone has managed to embody a near perfect stereotype in a very positive way. The person who embodies the action figure is Nancy Pearl. There really is no one stereotypical librarian.

http://www.mcphee.com/laf/

I am going to conclude this blog post with a link to an article by Fatima Mernissi, The Casablanca Dream, Weaving Peace Into Globalization. I hope this makes you think a bit, I don't particularly care if you like it or hate it, but that you think about it.

http://www.mernissi.net/books/articles/casablanca_dream.html