Daily Thoughts 8/6/2009 ( Email Newsletters )

Karl Capek author of R.U.R. -- Rodham's Universal Robots. Karl credited his brother, Josef Čapek, as the true inventor of the word robot.

Daily Thoughts 8/6/2009

These are all email newsletters I get in my inbox for the latest information on books being released.

Fast Facts from Baker and Taylor
http://www.btol.com/fastfacts/
Email fastfacts@btol.com to join this one

　
Read Alert
http://www.booklistonline.com/default.aspx?page=general_info&id=64

　
Shelf Awareness
http://www.shelf-awareness.com/

Michael Chabon has a new book Manhood For Amateurs which is coming out in October. I really like Chabon's books. This is a nonfiction title which should be interesting. He is mostly a literary author.

Today has been another quiet day. I spent some time reading Kirkus Reviews this morning and still have to read The New York Times Book Review. I also spent some more time weeding books. It has been a steady predictable day.

On the way home, I read some of Harry and the Pirates And Other Tales From The Lost Years by Brian Lumley. This is a kind of weird tale featuring Harry Keogh, a psychic and mystic who can talk to the dead. It is not that scary, but it does have some creepy beasts in it with odd historical footnotes. This book contains two novellas; For The Dead Travel Slowly and Harry and the Pirates; and a short story; End Piece: Old Man With a Blade. Brian Lumley is a British Fantasy Award winning author. He travels in the footsteps of H.P. Lovecraft and other writers of strange tales.

Daily Thoughts

Illustration to American popular song "Beautiful dreamer"by Currier and Ives (between 1856 and 1907).

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On the way home, I read How to Manage an Effective Nonprofit Organization by Michael A. Sand. I am kind of neutral about this book. It serves a specific purpose which makes it hard to review. It is a series of checklists of what you need to do to effectively run a nonprofit. The lists seem accurate and to the point, but they are not that interesting. Still, the book is very practical in a sort of this is what needs to be done kind of way. It would be a good book to check to see if you are missing any specific activity in managing an effective nonprofot organization.

This morning, I started reading Halo, The Cole Protocol by Tobias Buckell. It is on the Locus bestseller list for paperbacks. The book starts out with lots of action. On the way home, I finished about half of the novel. It is a solidly entertaining serial science fiction novel. Not spectacular.

This is clearly written for those people who play the video game. Most of the references are to things which happen in the video game. The author clearly tries to follow the video games storyline. Tobias Buckell has clearly played the game. It is a good first series novel set in a serial setting like Star Trek. I think he still has to work out what makes people excited about the formula in the video game.

I am sure that he will write more books in the Halo universe. This book is clearly selling well. I think a second one will be better. I expect him to write another one. I will read it. This is light quick escapism. It is fluff which takes your mind off everyday worries.

I also went on Wikimedia to look for images of Abraham Lincoln which I could print out for my display. Wikimedia is one of my favorite sources for public domain images. I found a picture of Abraham Lincoln reading with his son Tad and a painting of Abraham Lincoln in the Emancipation Proclamation so far. The lady who is donating the book, The Cosgrove Report a mystery about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln is coming at 3:00 p.m. this afternoon. I also have selected several books on Abrahm Lincoln to display. It is the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln's birthday on February 12. It is also the bicentennial of Darwin's birthday as well.

I spoke to the lady about the display and summarized J.G.A. O'Toole's biography on a single sheet of paper and put it in the display. She wants to do another display about animals in the library. I have to think about how this might be done.

I also spent a bit of time weeding the reference books. I have to weed and shift the 100s, 200s, and 300 dewey number sections in reference right now. It was a surprise project.

Six Hours Past Thursday by Jack Payne came in for me to read through interlibrary loan. I am looking forward to reading the book.

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Statue of Isidore of Seville (c.560–636) at the entrance staircase of the National Library of Spain in Madrid. Sculpted in Italian white marble by José Alcoverro y Amorós (1835–1910) in 1892.

Daily Thoughts

Today was another steady day. I put together a list of family oriented films which we might show on Sunday afternoons. A lot of them are cartoons, Shrek, The Incredibles, classic Popeye cartoons, or musicals The Wizard of OZ, High School The Musical, and Annie. Now that I have a short list, I am supposed to meet in committee to select what we are going to show. I have volunteers for the first three committee members.

I also spent some time filing looseleafs for the New York Code of Rules and Regulations and Bender's Forms for the Civil Practice.

This is the first day in a while where I have not done any specific weeding. I selected some books to be sent to the bindery, mostly older material that was in the storage area. Also, I reviewed a few older titles for discard. Some of them were classic works by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I decided these had literary merit and were worth keeping. I also kept some of Ian Fleming's early James Bond novels.

I finisehd reading Building Hope Leadership In The Nonprofit World by John Bateson. It was a very interesting book about running a busy crisis center for preventing suicide. The book was a combination of a memoir and a management guide for nonprofits. I will be writing a review of it soon.

Immediately after finishing Building Hope, I started reading How To Manage An Effective Nonprofit Organization by Michael A. Sand. I am trying to get a better understanding of the process of management in the nonprofit versus the for profit world. Hopefully this will give me a better sense of what is happening at my job.

Daily Thoughts

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

New York Times articles on the Library of Congress
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/16/arts/design/16cong.html?partner=rss

I put another book on hold, The Devil's Eye by Jack McDevitt. It is archaeological science fiction which can be kind of entertaining.

Today has been another quiet day. I finished the weeding of the social science books, now I have to do the oversize social science books. We have a selection of quarto titles. I'll probably help my colleague with shifting the 400's, 500's and 600's first to create space in one aisle of shelving units.

I did some weeding in the Job Information Center. I'll be working on getting updated titles for there as well as a variety of updated computer books for the new Windows Vista. People are still getting books focused on XP mostly.

I folded 100 service brochures for the public. This is the first batch that is going out to the public.

On the way home, I scanned through a bit of The Ghost In Love by Jonathan Carroll. I almost think it is more of a philosophical statement about what brings happiness and a sense of fulfillment in life than a novel. I will write a review about it tomorrow. It put me in a very good mood when I finished reading this book. I think I understand a bit more than I did before. There are a few things in it which might change a persons life for the better.

I am now reading Getting Things Done When You Are Not In Charge, How To Succeed In A Support Position by Geoffrey M. Bellman. This is a book about being productive and doing a good job in a support position.

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What Kind of Reader Are You? Your Result: Dedicated Reader You are always trying to find the time to get back to your book. You are convinced that the world would be a much better place if only everyone read more.
Obsessive-Compulsive Bookworm
Literate Good Citizen
Book Snob
Non-Reader
Fad Reader
What Kind of Reader Are You? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

This was on Alabama Bookworm's blog. I found it kind of entertaining.

I have started reading The Knights of the Cornerstone by James P. Blaylock. It is a modern fantasy novel in the tradition of Neil Gaiman or John Crowley. It has a very nice otherworldly feeling of a novel full of hidden secrets.

I read through several copies of The New York Times Book Review this morning and selected a graphic novel, Swallow Me Whole, for purchase as well as several social science titles. Sometimes, the New York Times Book Review gets to be very plain. You get used to it after reading it every week for years on end. I also put the The lost art of walking : the history, science, philosophy, and literature of pedestrianism by Geoff Nicholson on hold for myself. I love walking. I am not a fast moving person. It is one of the reasons I like yoga as well. It is done in a slow relaxed manner.

Two more books came in for me to read, The Ghost In Love by Jonathan Carroll and The Alchemy of Stone by Ekaterina Sedia. A nice bit of fantasy and steampunk by two excellent authors.

I spent some more time weeding the social sciences section. I just finished weeding the military section in the social sciences. It needs to be updated. I put some Jane's military guides up for order on fighter planes, warships, and submarines. This should help a small amount. I am not too familiar with military books. I have to figure out where a good contemporary military bookstore is online so I can look at their stock. Strand Books and Powell's both have military sections, Amazon.com does not, nor does Barnes and Noble.

I finished reading Knights of the Cornerstone on the way home on the subway train. It is a nice novel, but not an exceptional novel. It kind of meanders along telling the story of Calvin Bryson whose relatives are part of a mystical cult related to the Templars called The Knights of the Cornerstone.

The cornerstone is a stone from the original temple mount in Jerusalem. They supposedly used it to found their community. The story begins with a mystical object, a holy veil. This veil is supposed to have special powers. There are other examples of holy relics throughout the story. Sometimes the characters don white shirts with red crosses. I don't find the mysticism to be particularly compelling as it is told in this story.

The adversary is not truly evil, he is in it for the money. He is mindlessly vicious. A force of nastiness. He views the relics as a source of cash and seeks the treasures which the communities holds. This is not particularly convincing. I think while the story is entertaining; it could have been much better.

The hero is a kind of every man, a cartoonist who has been pulled into the unfolding story. He is not particularly convincing as a hero. I wish he was a bit more heroic. I can't really recommend this story. It is neither here nor there. It is not bad, but not good either.

Another novel which I tried to read earlier was Andy Remic War Machine. After a while, I couldn't read anymore. One character drinks fourteen pints of guinness and continuous to fight in a bar fight. There is a gratuitous macho theme to this science fiction novel. It has a James Bond like quality where the fights and the jokes become preposterous in a tongue and cheek way.

This makes the story a little bit fun, but at the same time overblown. If you want slap stick wildness you might like this novel. It purports to be hard military science fiction, but when does a lady fight a poisonous fanged robot with a super sharp sword and win in hard science fiction. A little bit too silly for my tastes.

Daily Thoughts

Jane Austen

Good Morning

There are a lot of people who come into our library to use the wireless internet access. Many of them are accountants, (numbers people) or computer people, (system administrators, web designers or programmers). I try and talk to them to see what they want in our computer books section. Because of this I have ordered books on Ubuntu linux, Suse Linux and Oracle for the systems side, and Crystal Reports, Dreamweaver, and web design for the design side.

They usually come in and sit in a quiet corner. A lot of them want an outlet so they don't have to rely on batteries. I like when professionals come into the library to work. They are usually quiet and don't ask a huge amount of questions unless the wireless internet goes down. Also, I think they make an excellent constituency for keeping the library open. It is a place to work.

I spent a bit more placing orders in different carts for January in Baker and Taylor. I think I have my initial orders in for mass market paperbacks (all categories), Job Information Center, 650s (Business management and accounting), computers, graphic novels and manga, and 300s mainly social science.

These are some beautiful pictures of the inside of a refurbished convent library. I found the link on the Kimbooktu, blog. http://www.fotoreport.at/galerie/stifte/admont/

On another note, I have the new list for low circulation items from the cental computer office. This has already speeded up the weeding somewhat for the 300s.

I also finished reading The January Dancer by Michael Flynn. It has a rather nice surprise ending. The book might take me a little bit of time to write up properly as there are some interesting aspects to the story I have not seen in a while in current science fiction.

Good Morning

Sherlock Holmes & Dr Watson, "The Reigate Squire", Postage Stamp, United Kingdom. I rather liked the image.

Good Morning

I am rather at a loss for words this morning. I am not sure what to say. Sometimes life is like this. I am sure more words will come in time. Luckily, it is one of those lazy mornings where all is quiet. I am drinking a bit of tea. Maybe, I'll read the paper on the way in to work in a few minutes. I'm working late tonight. I can see a quiet, peaceful, uneventful day outside my window beckoning. It will be unlike my other days of late.

There was an interesting article in Library Journal, The September 15, 2008 issue on Green Weeding. There were two companies that offered to have discarded books sent to them. They would sell the books and give a portion of the proceeds back to the library. Apparently, Brooklyn Public Library contracts with http://www.blogistics.com/ to take away their discarded items. There is also another company that does this. http://www.betterworldbooks.com/ It might be something which my library could possibly do.

Today, I spent quite a bit of time ordering computer books. I ordered some linux books focused on desktop pcs not servers today. I also updated some JIC books for the library.

There was only one book that came in for me to read, King of Sword and Sky by C.L. Wilson. I tried reading a bit of it on the train home, but found it not to my liking.

I also read the sections of Toll The Hounds with Karsa Orlong in it. This amounted to maybe five or six chapters out of a 725 page book. It seems some fantasy readers love overlong very florid complex writing. I think the book could have been half the length it was and still told the exact same story. Not everyone likes their writing short and sweet.

It has been a nice pleasant slow day.