Daily Thoughts 9/16/2009

Samuel R. Delany, African American Science Fiction Writer and Essayist. His writing can be quite controversial.

Daily Thoughts 9/16/2009

Today has been a quiet day. We did a reference meeting discussing different reference books. I discussed the 2008 New York State Statistical Yearbook which gives a lot of useful information including information on many of the agencies in New York as well as county crime statistics.

I also discussed our meeting with a local publisher with one of the technical services people. Hopefully, we should be getting some very interesting books.

On the way to work, I finished reading Free The Future of A Radical Price by Chris Anderson. It has quite a bit of relevance to libraries. As books start out in the digital form, they become increasingly sought after as ebooks, they also become pirated and available as torrent downloads. People prefer to have books in digital format for free and it is very easy to get them this way; or at very low prices. Many people would like to pay $4.99 for an ebook.

I have read a variety of books in the digital format for free, many of the from the Baen Free Library, Creative Commons, or through Project Gutenberg. There is a lot of material out of copyright which you can get very easily.

Today books start out as ebooks, maybe they are not sold initially as ebooks, but the editing and manuscripts are usually done and stored on a computer. This file is what is sent to the publisher to turn it into a variety of formats, pdf, ebook, audiobook, physical book, and other formats. A physical hardcopy has become a value added service. People still prefer to read their books in paper. I am not sure how long this will last as digital readers become better.

A lot of authors are giving away their books for free in a digital form, following the idea that giving away a free ebook drives the sales of the print book. Many people find reading a print book preferable to ebooks. Two very prominent authors who do this are Paulo Coelho and Cory Doctorow. I enjoy reading Cory Doctorow quite a bit.

Chris Anderson gives a reason to why this works in his book and why it is going to grow and continue happening. If you want to understand why companies bundle free products with pay products, this book does a good job. It is also very entertaining.

I was a bit under the weather the last couple of days, so I spent some times updating the book displays, and making sure the new arrivals section was in order. I think tomorrow I will get back to my weeding.

I really should get back to reading the Egalley of The Case for Books Past, Present, and Future. There is an article on it in Publishers Weekly. I have been distracted.
http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6696290.html

Daily Thoughts 9/2/2009

Harvard University's Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library.
From : http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/6f/HarvardWidenerLibrary.jpg

Daily Thoughts 9/2/2009

I have started reading The Case For Books Past, Present, and Future by Robert Darnton who is the head of the Harvard University libraries. This book is a collection of essays many of them originally published in the New York Review of Books. The book opens with a section entitled Google and the History of Books. Harvard University is part of the Google digitization project for books. The form I am reading the book in is that of an egalley from Netgalley. The book is already quite interesting. The first section after the introduction is Google and The Future of Books.

I picked up two more books to read. The first is Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon. It is a mystery with fantasy elements in it. For some reason it is on the Locus Magazine science fiction bestseller list. I think it is because of the author. The other book which I picked up to read is Knight of Knives A Novel of the Malazan Empire by Ian C. Esslement. This book is a standalone book that is related to a long running epic fantasy series.

Today has been a solid day. I did some weeding in the 800s, updated the graphic novels display, made sure the books in the "New Arrivals" were still new and did some ordering. We are getting a lot of requests on our purchase alerts for urban fiction and romance books. I picked out two biography books for the large print section. Biographies are very popular at the book mobile.

On the train home, I read some of Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon. This book is going to create strong reactions against and for it. On the one hand it is sordid, full of drug references, and disorientingly psychedelic at times. On the other hand it has a beat style with riffs of flowing sentences, interesting dialogue, and wildly eccentric characters. At the same time it is a novel of the 1960s it is also a detective novel. I have never read anything like this. The book is quite strange.

The book can be utterly fascinating at some times and completely disorienting at times. Doc, the main character is a detective who is perpetually stoned and sorts of drifts through the novel creating atmosphere. The atmosphere is the dark side of the hippie era where all the nastiness happens. Some people will love it, others will hate it.

Daily Thoughts 8/28/2009

Cover of the pulp magazine Weird Tales (October 1934, vol. 24, no. 4) featuring The Black God's Kiss by C. L. Moore (first of the Jirel of Joiry stories). Cover by Margaret Brundage.

I am enjoying reading Songs of the Dying Earth. My favorite short story so far is The Final Quest of the Wizard Sarnod by Jeff Vandermeer. It is a truly strange tale with miniaturized people, blimps, and magic. Jeff Vandermeer has a real ability to describe the fantastic in vivid ways. I have read many of his novels. His website is quite interesting. http://www.jeffvandermeer.com/

I am still reading The Management Myth. I am learning often the main reason that people use consultants is that companies are often unwilling to do what needs to be done because of internal politics or mismanagement. Consultants are often hired to do what companies already know they need to do. It is like so many things in this world.

The second thing I learned today from reading The Management Myth is that the moment a consultant says the word strategy he is going to come up with a plan that will cost you a lot of money. This is one of the reasons I like this book so much. It can be unexpectedly morose.

As I am reading The Practice of Management, I have come across another truism. It seems like Peter Drucker's statements have become the accepted ideas behind many modern businesses. The latest truism is that the best investment you can make is in people. I don't know if this is completely true. If people don't have the tools they need, they simply can't be effective.

My access to the egalley on Netgalley for The Case For Books, Past, Present and Future by Robert Darnton has been confirmed. Now, I can start reading the book. I like reading about books. There is something comforting in the written word. Eppecially if the written word is by a librarian like Robert Darnton.