Daily Thoughts 2/17/2010

Printing Press Mural, Library of Congress, United States.

Daily Thoughts 2/17/2010

I did not read a whole lot today. I did another exercise for Fundamentals of Collection Development and Management. I also walked up to my local library and returned a book.

I went to Barnes and Noble and looked at what they had. We are getting many of the titles at Barnes and Noble, plus quite a few things which are more intellectual which they are not getting. As usual, I noted a few titles that seemed interesting. Seth Godin, a prominent writer on advertising and the internet has a new book, Linchpin. There is also a fantasy novel which looks interesting, The Adamantium Palace by Stephen Deas.

I also went to Target today. They have all the bestsellers on the New York Times Bestseller list as well as the Publishers Weekly bestseller lists arrayed for sale. It is kind of interesting. Plus, they have a lot of self help books, romance books, and diet books. Most of it is pretty bland. The library gets most of the bestsellers now. It was interesting looking at the young adult bestsellers. There were a lot of vampire novels. There were a few popular diet and exercise books which looked like they might be worth getting, The Weightwatchers New Complete Cookbook, and Making The Cut by Jillian Michaels which is an exercise book.

I have had a chance to read some more of The Talented Miss Highsmith. Right now, I am reading about the contents of Patricia Highsmith's library in the Swiss literary archive. Most important for the biographer of this book, Joan Schenkar are the 38 cahiers (small notebooks), and 18 diaries which helped in the composition of this book. Some of the titles are catching and appropriate, especially Grimm's Fairytales and The Personality of Cats. Something of a writers resides in the books they keep. There are quite a few mystery novelists that I recognize that are quite good, G.K. Chesterton, Ian Rankin, Chester Himes, and Raymond Carver, I also found it interesting that more than one copy of the Merck Manual and Gray's Anatomy is listed.

I read a bit more of Viral Loop by Adam Penenberg as well. I am reading about viral marketing right now. He describes how hotmail became popular. More importantly, he describes how it is possible to make a feature length movie with a digital videocamera which costs about $10,000. This is going to get even cheaper to do. It is also possible to show a movie very cheaply as well. With a laptop, a projector, and a screen you can show a movie. This will get even cheaper as projectors drop in price. I found some of the subjects a bit off putting. Viral jokes and commercial advertising can be a bit blunt.