Daily Thoughts 08/21/2012

A coloured plate. Caption: “What day of the month is it?” he said, turning to Alice, 1907, Carroll, Lewis & Robinson, Charles. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, London: Cassell & Company, opp. p. 94

Daily Thoughts 08/21/2012

I did a brief update to the Facebook and Twitter pages for the library.

  I also finished reading Full Body Burden: Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats by Kristen Iversen.  It has a very ironic ending.  The nuclear weapons plant is shut down.  Then the land surrounding the plant is deeded to turn into a national park.  It is not acted on.  Many locals think the surrounding area is contaminated with plutonium.  There is quite a bit on how plutonium and other radioactive materials affect peoples health.  The book is full of ironies like this.

I also read some more of See It and Say It in Spanish by Margarita Madrigal.  It is very basic.  I might try reading her longer book, Madrigal's Magic Key to Spanish: A Creative and Proven Approach.  I have also been reading How to Make Yourself Happy and Remarkably Less Disturbable by Albert Ellis, Ph.D..  Albert Ellis is quite controversial, he is the founder of REBT (Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy), which is considered by many to be the first cognitive therapy.

I spent some time this morning looking at African American sites focused on books, Hue-Man bookstore, Mosaic Books, Black Expressions Book Club, and AALBC (African American Literature Book Club).  I also searched under African American in Powells which is the largest independent bookstore in the United States.

Daily Thoughts 08/17/2012

Dante's Inferno, 1924 Film Poster.

Daily Thoughts 08/17/2012

This morning, I read some more of Full Body Burden.  The author is describing the process of civil disobedience at Rocky Flats where protesters willing go to get arrested and then present their case in court.

This morning, I checked the Facebook and Twitter page for the library, checked the displays, checked the gift books and spent some time talking to our representative from BWI.  I also am looking at travel books to order.  I am looking at books about travel for all over the world, we get a lot of questions about travel in Africa and the Caribbean.  I spent some time visiting different travel publishers; Insight Guides, Fodor's, Frommer's, Lonely Planet, Moon, and Rough Guides.

I handed out a few certificates today for participating in the Annual Adult Summer Reading Game.  I also did a bit of shifting from the main collection for the biography books to the mezzanine.

Web Bits

How Books Shaped the American National Identity
http://www.npr.org/2012/08/14/158771705/-books-that-shaped-america

Daily Thoughts 08/14/2012

Pierre-August Renoir, Nature Morte Au Bouquet, 1871

Daily Thoughts 08/14/2012

This morning, I checked the displays and the gift books.  I also placed a few more orders for books, this time mainly bestsellers and popular titles.  Three books came in for me to read, Shine Shine Shine by Lydia
Netzer, Alif the Unseen by G. Willow Wilson, and Unfair Trade How Our Broken Global Financial System Destroys the Middle Class by Michael J. Casey.

In  addition, I checked the Facebook and Twitter pages for the library.

I read the latest Publishers Weekly and did a little bit of inventory in the mezzanine.

I have been steadily reading more of Full Body Burden Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats by Kristen Iversen.  It is definitely tragic.  There is an alcoholic father who is a lawyer.  The memoir part of the story has lots of sadness and denial about alcoholism.

The part about Rocky Flats is even more dire.  There are accounts of people getting radiation poisoning, environmental contamination from cesium, plutonium, and radiation fires, and intense protests.  Descriptions of the effects of plutonium-239 and the high incidence of cancer in the Rocky Flats community are sad and a bit frightening.

Web Bits

I'll Take a quiet library over a hip one.
http://www.aspentimes.com/article/20120812/LETTER/120819979/1020&ParentProfile=1061