Daily Thoughts 7/21/2011

Photo of American Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson, seated in a chair and reading a newspaper.
Daily Thoughts 7/21/2011

We had our Adult Summer Reading Book Chat.  I discused The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh.  Two other books thate were discussed were The Believing Brain and To The End of the Land.

This morning, I updated the Twitter account, checked the displays and checked the ereference.  There were some queries about the ereaders in the ereference.

We are having the Writers Networking Event from 6:00-8:00 p.m.  I am looking forward to reading some poetry and hearing some poetry.

Daily Thoughts 7/7/2011

 Photograph of Robert Louis Stevenson with King Kalakaua in his boathouse, February 3, 1889

Daily Thoughts 7/7/2011

Last night, I finished reading Ready Player One by Ernest Kline.  It is an immensely enjoyable novel especially if you like games and geeky things.  This morning, I started reading an advanced reading copy of Child Wonder by Roy Jacobsen.  It is a novel told from a child's perspective on the adult world.  The novel is a Norwegian novel.  The english translation will be released in October of 2011.  I tried to start reading Rule 334 by Charles Stross, but found some elements of the novel to be distasteful and a bit kinky.

This morning, I checked the Twitter account, checked the reference email, and went and got some snacks for the book chat this afternoon, and checked the displays.

The book chat went well.  It is part of the Adult Sumer Reading program. We did a round robin where people discussed the different books that they were reading during the summer.  Three books that were especially intereseting to me were Bloodlands Europe Between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder, another was Curation Nation How To Win In A World Where Consumers are Creators by Steven Rosenbaum, and a third was Bronx Primitive by Kate Simon.

The book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas S. Kuhn came in for me to read.  I am enjoying reading Child Wonder by Roy Jacobsen.  Childhood is different enough in Oslo, Norway to make things have that slight otherness which can be captivating as compared to the United States.  The story is quite sad.

Web Bits

This is the meeting of the Writers Networking Workshop at ACBAW, on the fourth Thursday of each month.  They are also meeeting on the third Thursday of each month at the Mount Vernon Public Library.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mount-Vernon-Writers-Network/232786433413622?sk=wall#!/photo.php?fbid=233075180051414&set=a.233075173384748.82549.232786433413622&type=1&theater

Encyclopedia of Science Fiction Goes Digital, Searchable and Free
http://blogs.publishersweekly.com/blogs/genreville/?p=1337

Daily Thoughts 6/28/2010

cover scan of Old Sleuth Library, no.40, from the collection of Larry Latham

Daily Thoughts 6/28/2010

I took some time to read Iron West by Doug TenNapel. It is a graphic novel set in the old west. The style of the story is very tongue in cheek. The drawing is a bit different. Doug TenNapel uses a very loose style with very wide brush strokes. I liked the storyline far better than the art. It is very cartoonish. The drawings contain a lot of humor.

It is cowboys versus robots. The robots are replacing people. It is rather silly to look at robots with sixguns. There is also a sasquatch and an old native american medicine man. This makes for a kind of mixed up story. It is very much a mish mash. It seems to be drawn more for the action and humor than a coherent storyline.

There is a fight between the loch ness monster and a giant robot made from an old west train. Ultimately, it does pull together in the end, but not before a lot of silliness. If you want to relax and read something for lighthearted humor and action, this graphic novel would fit the bill.

There is a map of the pattern of library closings here. It shows a steady increase in library closings between 2008 and 2010 http://www.losinglibraries.org/

Today was the opening day for Summer Reading, June 28, 2010. We sat in the lobby next to the gallery and handed out flyers to sign up for the teen summer reading program and the adult summer reading program. We also signed people up online on a laptop. We are planning on having a raffle at the end of the summer for people who sign up and read books or listen to audiobooks. I also handed out flyers for events associated with the summer reading program.

It was a pleasant thing to do. We answered peoples questions and had cookies for people to snack on. I think I handed out a little over 45 signup sheets for adults and signed up a few more people online as well. The childrens signup was downstairs.