Daily Thoughts 12/15/2009

Textile vendor in Pakistan reading the newspaper. Photo: Steve Evans "babasteve", Creative Commons Attribution 2.0

Daily Thoughts 12/15/2009

This is a list of the top 100 authors of the decade from the United Kingdom. This is a list of the top 100 authors of the decade.http://thebookseller.msgfocus.com/files/amf_bookseller/project_140/Bookseller_decade_roundup.pdf

On the way to work, I finished reading Daniel Goleman, Social Intelligence. It is a very interesting book.

I spent some time checking for books on psychology. I looked through the Psychology Today book column today. It lists three titles every other month. Choice magazine also has reviews for psychology and philosophy titles.

I also looked through Kirkus Reviews for December 1, 2009 and Deceomber 15, 2009. These are the last issues of Kirkus Reviews in print. One of the issues had the best young adult books of the year and the other had the best books of the year. There is a certain ambivalence reading these magazines because these are the last issues. Kirkus Reviews has always been one of the best review journals. Unfortunately, I don't think it did that well with promoting online reviews.

Today we have the first Graphic Novels Club. We are going to hold it in the fiction room. I have some light refreshments and we have tables and chairs set up. I've also got a number of Neil Gaiman's works. The Story of Miss Finch, Coraline, and Sandman. I could probably also get a couple of his novels, American Gods, Neverwhere, and Anansi Boys. Neil Gaiman is the honorary chair of National Library Week on April 11-17, 2010. http://www.ala.org/ala/newspresscenter/news/pressreleases2009/october2009/nlwgaiman_pio.cfm

We did the first meeting of the Graphic Novels club and discussed Sandman and various manga comics like Vampire Hunter D and Bleach. I also brought out copies of Theodor Seuss Geisel: The Early Works Volume 1 & 2 which are quite interesting to look at. Dr. Seuss did a lot of advertising comics before he wrote books for children.

On the way home, I read some of Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Diving into the Wreck which is about a woman who salvages space ships. I like the concept of taking dangerous risks to search for salvage in wrecked spaceships.