Ship Breaker a Novel By Paolo Bacigalupi

Ship Breaker a Novel By Paolo Bacigalupi

Paolo Bacigalupi just won the Nebula award for his novel, The Windup Girl. This is his second novel. He also wrote an excellent collection of short stories, Pump Six and Other Stories. This novel is a young adult novel, but after reading it, I think it will appeal to all ages.

The writing is extremly fast paced and suspenseful. I was glued to the book and finished it in a single sitting. There is a lot of swearing, violence, and some drug references. However, these do not detract from the story. The violence is not sensationalized, it is portrayed as being a necessity to survive, or as a form of hardness.

The setting is fascinating. It is a near future where the age of oil has ended. Empty oil tankers line the coastlines, there are massive hurricanes, and New Orleans is a drowned city. In this setting is Nailer, a teenage scavenger of shipwrecks who makes his living collecting copper wire, tin, and other light metals.

Nailer contrasts well with Nita a rich girl who he rescues from a shipwreck. This brings a life changing adventure. We travel by bullet train and solar clipper ship to escape the bad guys.

I like the technology, it is completely believable. Paolo Bacigalupi even makes reference to a Buckell cannon designed to shoot sails into the upper atmosphere where they will catch strong winds to pull a ship quickly. At the end of the book, he acknowledges Tobias Buckell, another one of my favorite science fiction writers for technical help.

This is a superb, fast paced, adventure novel set in a dystopic near future. Read it, enjoy it, tell others about it.

Daily Thoughts 5/21/2010

A photograph of a daguerreotype of Edgar Allan Poe 1848, first published 1880. Taken by W.S. Hartshorn, Providence, Rhode Island, on November 9th, 1848 Photograph taken in 1904 by C.T. Tatman.

Daily Thoughts 5/21/2010

Today, I finished reading Readers Advisory Service in the Public Library, 3rd Edition by Joyce G. Saricks. The author focused on the concept of appeal with books. Appeal is different than interpretation, it is the things which hold the readers attention, plot, frame, style, pacing, storyline, and characterization. It is not the same as academic criticism. It is the points that are used to catch the readers attention and sell the book by the author which the bookseller or librarian can capitalize on.

There were a number of ideas which caught my attention; the read alike bookmark, the annotated book list, and the idea of sure bets in different genres of books. This book focused advising on casual fiction and nonfiction. Casual fiction would include genres like romance, historical fiction, science fiction, mystery, noire and other leisure reading. Casual nonfiction would include travel stories, survival stories, contemporary issues, crime, popular culture, humor, popular science, memoirs, and other leisurely reading.

I am very much looking forward to taking the Readers Advisory 101 course that goes with this book.

I worked on my ordering this morning and read a bit more of Booklist. I also am working on getting the on order status up in the catalog properly for books on order at our library.

I had a chance to do a little desk clean up before I go to Book Expo America next week. I also cut some scrap and cleared out my to do box. Check the gifts for books to add. Remind people about activities like putting up the Bookletters page, shifting books in the mezzanine, and making sure the events flyer for the poetry club is up on the website. Checking for business cards to bring to the conference. The little rituals you do before you go on vacation or to a conference.

I am enjoying reading Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi. It is a very fast paced adventure story set in the near future. I like the setting a lot; the coastlines littered with the wrecks of oil tankers and the drowned city of New Orleans are quite intriguing. Paolo Bacigalupi just won the Nebula Award for The Windup Girl. I think the writing in Ship Breaker is even better.

Daily Thoughts 5/19/2010

Bust of Honoré de Balzac by Auguste Rodin, bronze (1891 – 1892), in the Victoria and Albert Museum., Taken by Andrew Dunn, 3, December 2004, Public Domain

Daily Thoughts 5/19/2010

An excellent article from Harvard Magazine on the changing role of libraries in the digital world. http://harvardmag.com/pdf/2010/05-pdfs/0510-36.pdf

Did my graphic novels club today. It did decently. We have a regular group of teenagers who come every Wednesday to play trading card games who usually take some of the material being presented. They also come to the anime club later in the week. One of our attendees mentioned a self publishing service for comics called http://www.ka-blam.com I also checked out the movie, Coraline which is also a book and graphic novel.

One of our clerks is working on a web page for a bestsellers, awards, and staff picks page using Bookletters widgets. It is coming together.

I focused on getting my ordering together before I go to Book Expo America next week. I read Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, and Booklist.

Several books came in for me to read, Changeless, An Alexia Tarabotti Novel by Gail Carriger, Steamed A Steampunk Romance by Kate McAlister, and Ship Breaker A Novel by Paolo Bacigalupi. I am looking forward to reading all three of them.

Daily Thoughts 5/16/2010

pen and ink drawing of the royal library in Königsberg, circa 1815

Daily Thoughts 5/16/2010

Last night, I read some more of War At The Wall Street Journal. It is different than most business books I have read. The focus is on deal making, who talked to whom, when they met, who are the parties discussing business transactions, and why they would meet. There is no dry theory. It is about phone calls, exchanging papers, talking to lawyers, being obsequious, fawning, or demanding, and sizing up the competition.

Television and Books

I have a television, but it is hooked up to a dvd and video player. The only way to get regular reception where I am is to buy cable. This means I watch television once a week at the laundromat while I am folding clothes. It is hard to read and fold clothes at the same time.

A lot of the television shows are now on computer. I watched the Roughnecks Starship Troopers on Youtube as well as a variety of clips from the news. A lot of the news websites will have video clips as well. It is easy enough to get any video coverage you might want to see of events on television on a computer these days. It is also very easy to read the news on Yahoo news, so you see and hear the same news everyone else is getting even if you are not watching television.

Also, I sometimes check out entire series of television shows from my library. I checked out the first season of Star Trek out, I Claudius from the BBC, and a variety of different PBS dvds. This is less bothersome than watching the shows each day. It allows me to watch what I want, when I want to.

This does not mean that television is not connected to the book world. There is even a Book TV, I have never watched it, but it is there. http://www.booktv.org/ Also, many library websites have Books on the Air which http://library.booksite.com/5936/nl/?list=NLAIR which contains a listing of when various authors are presenting each week. You sometimes question whether Youtube is really a separate thing from regular television these days. Almost all television shows are now born digital like books are increasingly becoming born digital.

It is important to think of a book as a package. For example, I read Star Trek novels, but I also watch the shows, and read the comic books. I haven't played the video games. I also have not played the video games for Halo. However, I recently purchased Halo Helljumper written by Peter David which is a graphic novel, as well as the book, Halo: The Cole Protocol by Tobias Buckell. Halo will eventually come out as a movie and after the movie, I can easily imagine it as a Saturday morning cartoon. I read it because I like Peter David's and Tobias Buckell's writing.

This is true for more than just fiction. Ken Burns Civil War is a PBS documentary and a book. So is the Julia Child cookbook. If they can turn a cookbook into a movie starring Meryl Streep, Julie & Julia, they can find out how to package most books.

Think of media packages being born digital as a document, maybe something like an ebook. First they get turned into an ebook, then a physical book, then other products are spun off from them; audiobooks, films, music, posters, website skins, and other things. This can be true of anything from books on horses to horror novels. It does not have to happen this way. Sometimes the movie will be produced first, or the music, or even art work. What matters is that everything is now open to multiple formats of our choice.

This choice will lead to options when we purchase items, we will have a choice, ebook, book, audiobook, and then maybe related films, television, and music.

The line is also becoming blurred between what exactly is a television show, if it is a show you can watch on television or a computer, is it a television show. I don't see programs like authors @ google, http://www.google.com/talks/authors/index.html being that different from watching television. Nor do I see online conference videos like the TED conference being that differenct from watching television http://www.ted.com/ . The lines between the different types of media are blurring.

Other Thoughts

I put Steamed by Katie Macalister on hold, it is a steampunk romance novel. I also put Ship Breaker on hold by Paolo Bacigalupi. This is a young adult novel. Paolo Bacigalupi just won the Nebula Award for The Windup Girl, yesterday. He is a fantastic writer. I was pleasantly surprised, Paulo Bacigalupi's novels are very inclusive and international in flavor and have a strong environmental and political message.

I read some more of War at the Wall Street Journal. The author is describing the merger between News Corp owned by Rupert Murdoch and Dow Jones owned by the Bancroft family. Dow Jones owns the Wall Street Journal which is one of the two most influential newspapers in the United States, the other being the New York Times. Rupert Murdoch is often criticized for his biased reporting to the right, much like Arthur Sulzberger Jr. is criticized for his reporting to the left with the New York Times. Rupert Murdoch's takeover of the Wall Street Journal essentially polarized news reporting in the remaining newspapers.

I also started reading a bit of Readers Advisory Service in the Public Library. The author describes how to do book lists, bookmarks, and other readers advisory tools in this book. I am hoping the book will give me some ideas on how to improve our bibliographies and bookmarks. I just subscribed to Fiction_L which is a readers advisory listserv listed in this book. http://www.webrary.org/rs/flmenu.html

Daily Thoughts 4/16/2010

Beitou Branch, Taipei Public Library13 March 2007, User:KaurJmeb, Wikimedia, Creative Commons Attribution Share A Like 2.5

Today has been a nice quiet day. I spent some time looking at donor lists and events from public libraries in the area.

Paolo Bacigalupi has a new young adult novel coming out in May, Ship Breaker. He is a very interesting author. I am hoping it is as good as The Windup Girl. His writing is excellent.

I am reading two books at once right now, Linnea Sinclair, Rebels and Lovers, and Louise Erdrich, Shadowtag.

We put up a display with jazz books, cds, and dvds.