Daily Thoughts 9/5/2009

James Thurber, American Writer

Daily Thoughts 9/5/2009

Today is Labor Day weekend both my work library and my local library are closed. It is nice to have a holiday in honor of labor plus it gives me a chance to relax and unwind free from library time for a while. I sometimes think "library time" has a different character to it like "bookstore time" where things flow a little differently from the rest of the world.

I am reading Laurie R. King, The Language of Bees. It is a novel featuring Sherlock Holmes in his later years. It is very different from Arthur Conan Doyle. Sherlock Holmes is semi-retired and tends to his bees, he also has a younger companion Mary Russell. Apparently, he also has a son, Damian who is an eccentric artist. It is quite odd to think of Sherlock Holmes with a son.

Daily Thoughts 9/4/2009

Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961)

Daily Thoughts 9/4/2009

I finished reading Inherent Vice on the train to work this morning. It was quite enjoyable if a little bit strange. I can recommend it.

An article from the New York Times on Subway Reading.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/nyregion/06reading.html?_r=2&hp

This morning I designed a poster for the graphic novels display. We can print on 11" x 17" paper in color. I also took a few minutes to update a couple of my old bookmarks with our new logo which looks very nice. We should have new business cards for the staff soon with the logo.

This afternoon I spent some time weeding in the plays section. Most of the plays have literary merit so they are not that easy to deaccession. I am looking to replace some of them, move some of them to storage, and mend a few as well.

Daily Thoughts 9/3/2009

Ken Kesey statue, "The Storyteller", at Broadway and Willamette streets in downtown Eugene, Oregon

Daily Thoughts 9/3/2009

I read some more of Inherent Vice on the way to work. Doc Sportello the main character does not have a whole lot of redeeming qualities. The most interesting quality about him is his love of popular music and his ability to describe things he sees in an incredibly poetic manner. He also likes what he does which is being a detective and smoking a lot. The plot seems almost secondary to the free form descriptions in the novel. The author weaves in a lot of hippie and surfer myths and legends from Los Angeles throughout the story. I was looking at the New York Times Bestsller List, Inherent Vice is currently #8 on the list.

This morning, I put in a display of books from storage. I brought up some books on Egypt and Africa. Many of them were precolonial history of the African Kingdoms.

I have also had a chance to do more weeding. I finished going through the poetry and have started going through the plays. I am finding that some of the books need to be replaced. Right now, I am going to replace a few plays by Lorraine Hansberry and Eugene O'Neill.

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 9/1/2009

Allegorical Portrait of Dante, 1530

Daily Thoughts 9/1/2009

Today is another day. I am back from vacation. I weeded some of the 800s today mainly in the poetry section. I also worked on updating some of the displays with more current material. I am starting a graphic novel display and a display of oversize art books. I also plan on taking some of our books on Egypt and Africa in the storage area and putting them on display as well. I have a few bookmarks which needed to be updated done. One for graphic novels and the other for inspirational fiction.

I have to catch up on reading some catalogs as well as making sure my orders are together. I am thinking about how to do a graphic novels club as well as pick out some noire films for Sundays. There are the classics; The Thin Man, The Post Man Always Rings Twice, The Maltese Falcon as well as a few others to consider, Stage Fright, Touch of Evil, and The Third Man.

I did not read anything on the way home. Instead I made a to do list of things that need to be done. I have to do some analysis on our current circulation statistics to see which call numbers and authors are going out. I also have to take stock of what I am doing to see if there is any way which I can improve what is being done. I am thinking of the quality cycle of think, then act, then plan on what you have acted on, then do the improvements that need to be done.