Marble portrait bust of Marcus Aurelius. Roman, Antonine period, 161-180 AD. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.Daily Thoughts 12/11/2009
I am almost finished reading A Guide to the Good Life {the ancient art of stoic joy}. It is a modern interpretation of how to live a stoic life. There is a lot which is contestable. There are also a number of philosophical tools in it that can help manage anger, be more satisfied with what you have, and attain a great degree of tranquility. The author reminds us that there are things in our control, things which we have partial control over, and things which we have no control over at all. The main focus in the book is on how to achieve tranquility.
Early Word has an excellent spreadsheet list of the best book titles of the year. http://www.earlyword.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/BestBooks09ByCategory1.xls
I enjoyed reading A Guide to the Good Life, but I am passing on reviewing it. It is very hard to pass judgement on philosophy. The book is quite interesting.
This afternoon was very interesting. A colleague and I went to the system building. The libraries in the county I work in are a cooperative. They share common catalogs, interlibrary loan, and computing but not town budgets or administration.
On the way there we discussed ordering different kinds of books and ideas about what to order.
We went to pick out books from a very large donation of books from a news room. These were mainly fiction titles, memoirs, and history. There were a lot of very nice books. Two of the titles I remember are an oversize book called 1968 and Louise Gluck Village Life. There were even a few graphic novels and books on tape.
I always like going through donations of books to see what we should add to our collection. This was a little different as we were picking out what to bring back to our library. My colleague and I compared on notes on what we thought we should bring back and packed the books into boxes. We brought back three large cartons of donations many of which will be added to the collection. We still have to check each title to see if we already own it. If we own it, we will probably add it to the Friends of the Library book sale.
This morning, I spent some time finalizing a mystery order with a colleague as well. It was interesting.
On the way home, I read Gary Vaynerchuk, Why Now Is The Time to Crush It! Cash In On Your Passion. He is quite passionate in his business which he runs online. The book is a very quick read. It is also very lively and upbeat.
I learned something new today. I have 87 subscribers according to Google Webmaster. Subscribing looks much different than reading my blog. It was interesting to look at. I think it is actually easier to read my blog as a subscriber than if you look at it as a regular web page. http://bookcalendar.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default
I also have 57 followers through Google Friends. This is also interesting. It is far different than my average page count which comes in from the web which says about 48-50 hits a day. If you add up subscribers -- 87, Google Friends Followers 57, and incoming hits 48-50 hits, it adds up to around 192-194 viewers a day which is very different than what the web counter says. It says more people can subscribe and view your page through another service than necessary type in a link to your page.
I also looked at where people link to my website from. One site which I especially like is:
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