First off, this is a quick review of the audiobook, not the print version. I do not like this book at all. The cluttered, contrived and convoluted descriptions (to borrow from Ms. Valente’s style) is the main problem. The second is her choice to read her own work for this audiobook. Unlike say, Tina Fey reading Bossypants, or Neil Gaiman reading pretty much anything, she just cannot pull it off. Maybe its the pretentious tone or maybe the mispronunciations. In this audiobook Ms. Valente pronounces “brooch” like “pooch” or “goof”, instead of, as Merriam-Webster suggests: “broach”, “coach”, “loach”, “poach”, “roach”. If a fantasy writer can’t pronounce brooch properly then she needs to get someone else to read her work for her audio books. I mean, c’mon, at least 25% of characters in fantasy novels wear cloaks, most of which are probably clasped together with a brooch of some kind. I also take issue with her pronunciation of “marquess”, where she places the accent on the first syllable, but there is less agreement about the pronunciation of “marquess” than there is with “brooch” so I guess I have to let that one slide…

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The author’s solid knowledge of Eastern religion, specifically Hinduism, is cleverly married to the theme of transcendental experiences brought on by experimental new technology. Add to this the personal and professional crisies of the protagonist and the overall character-driven nature of the plot, and you have a dense but very engaging read.

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My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I gave this book a good 70 pages before deciding it wasn’t for me. The good in it is gradual character development resulting in characters who are richly multi-layered. I only got to see this fully in regard to the energy spring factory manger, but will extrapolate to the other major characters as well. The setting is generally well rendered. There is enough detail to give the story its bones, but it is vague and mysterious enough to allow the author the freedom needed to create this future dystopian world. My major complaint is with the style of the writing. There is little dialogue, with the characters primarily revealing themselves through self-reflection. I think this landscape of flat dialogue is why the book lost me.

Bacigalupi is a gifted writer, but not one that I care to read any more of. Also it must be noted that the subject matter of this book is dark in the extreme, and the author relies too much on shock value for my taste.

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So.  Now that the madness of coursework, part-time work and at-home-dadding is easing up.  I’m excited to get back to the blog.  Bring on 2012

RL

I’ll try to post more “real” stuff as soon as I can.

Peace out.

RL

Lots? 

Nnnope. 

Tons? 

Npe! 

A crushing, brain melting amount? 

YES!!!

Sadly this means that I’m not posting this fall, with the exception of this little bit here.  However fear not!  I will return in the winter to blog more occasionally.

Happy holidays to you all!

RL

This was initially discouraging for me, since I have done a couple of journalistic posts that are much, much longer than 500 words.  We both eventually came to the same conclusion however that since we write for different audiences,  certainly a blog aimed mainly at librarians can afford to have longer posts than a blog about skating.  Of course, much of his content involves photos of skate pros and interviews with them, so one could argue that his posts include a comparable amount of information as the posts on this blog do.  So the lesson here, as with any writing for public consumption is that you MUST know your audience.  Assuming that you have one.

Further regarding your audience and how to develop it-  to keep readers returning to your blog regularly-  it is imperative  to keep blogging on a regular basis.  Specifically, a daily basis.  The argument goes like this:  if a reader likes what they read on your blog, there is a decent chance that they’ll remember the next day and maybe check your blog again for new content.  If there  is nothing new posted on your blog on the next day, MAYBE the reader will return on the second day after reading your last post, but the chances of a random reader returning to your blog regularly diminish significantly with each day that goes by between posts.  As an aside, my brother-in-law, an avid reader of conventional media (i.e. books) shares my sentiments that a long post of quality is worth more than many short posts.  He has made this argument to his current bosses, but has been rebuffed, being told that they don’t like the idea and would rather have 5  or 6 posts go up a day!

No chance that this blog will be putting up that amount of posts.  That should be obvious since months can go by before I have the time to write here, but it certainly was enlighteningn to hear this.  Ill just have to let my tags, Facebook and twitter do my audience building for me.

And a final note, when giving your mischievous brother-in-law the administrator password to your blog, expect to find little unplanned surprises in inconspicuous places, such as your blogroll.  Sorry unnamed b.i.l., as much as I love the blog you write for my niece, her blog really has nothing to do with librarianship. Until now I suppose!  So the final lesson is, it never hurts to go back regularly and proofread your blog, and make corrections as needed.  Truth to tell, there were some outdated blogs listed on my blogroll that I also deleted, either because I decided that they weren’t as relevant as I once thought, or the writers have given up on blogging. 

Now pardon me, I have to go and change my administrative password for this blog.   And by the way, the word count for this post… 625.  

RL

ps.  There is a possibility that the appearance of the link to my niece’s blog was a left-over scrap of my brother-in-law’s blog tutorial.  In which case apologies are in order!  But if you knew my brother-in-law, you would know that the situation I describe in my post would not be out of the ordinary.  Either way, it is another fine example of the need for careful editing of one’s blog!

Unfortunately, even in the semi-rural setting of my hometown, any enjoyment of nature’s auditory gifts is routitinely spoiled by the roaring rush of a passing car, truck or motorcycle.  Any attempts to turn these nighttime sojourns into pure natural experiences are in vain.   So what’s the solution?   How can the body and the brain be moved, motivated and mystified during these brisk walks along only occasionally sidewalked country roads?  The answer is audiobooks!  

With a bare minimum of planning one can easily amplify the experience of the audiobook during an evening walk.  I’m writing this post fresh off a two hour walk listenting to the beginning of Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book.  As far as the book itself  is concerned, so far so good.  I like it.  It’s suited for nighttime listening out of doors for a variety of reasons.  What made this evening’s walk while listening to the book  particularly special however is due to an anomaly of my town. I’m lucky to live in a town which contains a graveyard which, in turn, contains the grave of a poet who was particularly fascinated with death.  Without simply giving away the name of my town (since I’d like to preserve a little bit of anonymity here), the more clever of my readers may be able to guess who the poet is when I say that she took the inspiration for her poems about death and graveyards and such from looking out the window of her room, which overlooked, you guessed it, a graveyard.  The same graveyard I chose to wander through at the end of  my long night time walk- all the while listening to Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book. 

And it was great!  The shadowy gravestones, old wrought-iron fences and barrows of the graveyard all brought what you’d expect to the experience of listening to this book.  Will I return to this graveyard during my next evening excursion with Mr. Gaiman?  Hard to say.  There are other spots in town that could easily do for the Graveyard Book that this graveyard did.

Prior to Gaiman, I listened to Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, a book that deals with the dark, the magic of ancient kings and malevolent faeries.  It makes for excellent nighttime listening and took the better part of two weeks to get through due to its length.  While listening to Clarke’s book I passed, on various nights, mossy swampy hollows whose edges dropped off sharply from the roadside, were filled with protruding trunks of maple, birch and oak trees and  bordered on their opposite sides by decades old disused train tracks. 

One night while listening to this same novel I almost trod on a dessicated cat, its white bones lying on the roadside that runs along several acres of preseved farmland.  And then, looking up from the cat, I found the fields to be covered- for hundereds of yards- for as far as I could see, with the blinking green luminesence of hundreds of lightning bugs.  It was nothing like anything I had ever seen before.  Its beauty was stunning.  

All of thiswas very evocative of the plot and atmosphere of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrel, particularly the stark contrast of the unsightly remains of the cat with the otherworldly beauty of the hundreds of lighning bugs, but also the lonely swampy hollow places where nature seemed to have overwhelmed what man had made. 

So, in closing, while audiobooks are very well suited for long car rides when on vacation, or to listen to on the train or bus on your way to work, I encourage you to sometime take an evening walk, and find out for yourself what you can discover in the natural world when you listen to a good audiobook, and to witness what the natural world can in turn add to your experience of the book itself.  You may be surprised by what you discover.

Here are some related links:

Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell 

Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book

Very good sounding headphones

RL

This put me  in mind of the other characters in science fiction who serve individual roles as keepers and processors of information.  In Frank Herbert’s Dune there are de-facto librarians who serve humanity in lieu of computers after a war between humans and computers: “Mentats” who process information and perform complex calculations, and the “Bene Gesserits” who are the keepers of humanity’s  historical record.

Then there are the creators of the “Foundation Encyclopedia” in Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series, who are tasked with cataloging all of mankind’s accomplishments, history, technology, etc. after the ”Psychohistorian” Hari Seldon character predicts a galactic dark age lasting 30 thousand years.  These are research librarians working in concert to save us all.

There is the librarian “Watcher” character Giles in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer television series who works to help prevent the apocalypse by assisting Buffy in her efforts against vampires, demons, and the like.  This brings the concept of customer service to new heights. 

And in Sean McMullen’s novel Souls in the Great Machine, librarians are again the idealistic keepers of humanity’s remaining knowledge… until the OverLibrarian creates the computer Calculor which is made of enslaved human components.  Ahem.

So! its not all sweetness and light out there; to all the librarian haters, you’ll be eating crow after the apocalypse! 

For more fun reading on this topic (which is sadly in short supply on the interwebs) check out the musings of other librarians who concern themselves with it. They are either preparing for maintaining library services after the apocalypse, or are just interested in reading about it. One such blog is http://www.monsterlibrarian.com/, another is an ALA article by librarian Jeanne Bogino from New Lebanon, NY:  ”Devour Books, not People“.  If you know of more, please let me know via a comment!

RL

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/239944/july-27-2009/nailed–em—library-crime

This piece focusses on a 7 year old boy, Dominic Philip, whose library card is revoked after he got a picture of himself in the newspaper leading his favorite library’s summer reading program’s kickoff parade.  Reportedly, a library employee spotted the description of Dominic next to the photo in which it is revealed that he lives in a town which does not contribute to funding the library (Tatamy), and reported it.  His mother was then prompty informed that Dominic was not entitled to his library card and would have to return it.

Here is an excerpt from an article in the PA newspaper the Express-Times that explains the funding structure that ended up denying this child access to the library he had loved visiting:

“Dominick led the parade of children around the (Nazareth Borough) library Wednesday and went home with books from his favorite series, the “Magic Tree House.”

The following day, the 7-year-old Tatamy Borough resident listened to a voice message at his home, saying his Nazareth library card was invalid, and he would have to start going to the library in Palmer Township. 

Melissa Philip received a library card for Dominick from the Easton Area Public Library system at the Palmer branch about a year ago, but as the family recently discovered, the card mistakenly included a sticker that allowed her to get a card for the boy from the Memorial Library of Nazareth and Vicinity. 

Nazareth library cards are not available to Tatamy residents because the borough does not contribute funding to that library system. Dominick Philip can now receive a paid subscription for $5 annually to the Easton Area Public Library, but that subscription permits the use of only Easton Area facilities.“

The sticker mentioned in the news report is an “Access PA” sticker that allows patrons of member libraries to check out books from other member libraries in person without having to go through inter-library loan. 

Dominic’s township, Tatamy, does not contribute a per-capita tax for the use of the local library, which is the Palmer branch of the Easton Library.   According to a circulation staffer at Easton Public Library, adult residents of Tatamy may pay a $30 subscription fee (children and students through college pay $5) to check out books from the Easton Library.  

However the subscription card does not allow Tatamy residents like Dominic to check out books from other libraries in Pennsylvania per the Access PA program, and they are not entitled to ILL services from the Easton Library.  I confirmed this with a phone call to the ILL department at Easton Library.  The ILL staffer there told me that although under previous directors “subscription members” were allowed to use ILL services, the new director changed the policy in the hope that it would encourage people to push for local funding of libraries in their own towns.

In my opinion, this ”Library Crime” segment is PR poison for the Nazareth Library.  The big question for me though, particularly after having just finished a course in Library public relations, was is this “Library Crime” piece negative PR for libraries in general, given the compelling story presented by Dominic Philip and his mother? 

I spoke to several people involved in this piece including  Lynn Snodgrass-Pilla, the director of the Nazareth Public Library, Leslie Burger, the “Angry Library Lady” in the Colbert video (and a former American Library Association President!), as well as Mark Gould of the ALA’s Public Information Office.

When I presented Mark Gould with my perception that the Colbert Piece reinforces some of the negative stereotypes that continue to plague libraries, for example that Ms. Burger is reinforcing the “Shhh” Librarian stereotype through the video of her in slow motion ramming a book on the shelf, the description of her as the “Angry Library Lady”, and the video cross-cutting of her talking about “The Rules” with the arguments of the symathetic image of Dominic Philips mother, Gould suggeted that I was bringing up my “personal baggage” and that he had recieved many emails describing this report as a “charming piece”.  He also informed me that the ALA’s position on former ALA Presidents commenting on library issues is that  “We hope that members will work off of ALA messaging” but that Burger was certianly at liberty to say what she liked. We talked some more and had an amicable end to the conversation.  From a PR perspective Gould did a pretty good job of handling the public relations nature of my call, even though he was a bit testy at times.

However, the director of the Nazareth Library, Lynn Snodgrass-Pilla, obviously did not find the piece as charming as Mark Gould did.  In fact, when I called and very politely asked my questions (I am ALWAYS polite, as Rad Librarians should be) she treated me more like a telemarketer than anything else. She did answer my question about why no one from her library was interviewed for the piece: she said that “no one (from the Colbert Report) asked”.  She then bitterly  told me to talk to Leslie Burger about it, abruptly said a sing-songy ”goodbye” and rudely hung up on me!  She is clearly not a very nice person, and pretty lousy at handing public relations issues.

In contrast the “Angry Library Lady” Leslie Burger (i.e 2006 ALA President) handled my questions about her role in the piece quite well and was gracious enough to grant me a lengthy interview.  What I found most interesting is how she ended up in the piece.  Apparently the Colbert Report called the ALA communications office, spoke to staffer Macey Morales and asked her if she could recommend anyone to appear in the segment.  Ms. Morales reportedly remembered that Leslie Burger, when she was ALA President, described as  part of her public communications mission a desire to appear on either Jon Stewart’s Daily Show, or Stephen Colbert’s Colbert Report.  So, Ms. Morales put Colbert’s people in touch with Ms. Burger. 

Ms. Burger said that she never met Stephen Colbert during the recording of her interview and that the piece was obviously edited for maximum comedic impact.  I asked her how the image of her angrily shoving a book on the shelf got into the piece and she said that that had been her idea.  She also said that she knew going in that she was playing the “straight man” in the piece.  I didn’t ask her why she volunteered to say “Dominic got nailed!”, which seems to me a pretty stupid thing to say from a PR standpoint, but in her defense, she did share alot of useful information in the piece about how libraries are funded.  She expressed dismay that the Nazareth Public Library did not offer a subscription service like the Easton Library did, and she said she hoped that the Colbert piece would prod libraries like the one in Nazareth to examine their policies and make sensible changes.  

Well, as ancient and now deceased radio personality Paul Harvey used to say, now you know the rest of the story.  I still think the question of whether this particular bit of national exposure of library policy was good public relations is still open.  However, in order to view the “Library Crime” piece in its full context it would be worthwhile to view the Colbert Report’s other satirical pieces on libraries and national library week below.  Clearly Mr. Colbert’s intentions in producing the “Library Crime” segment of his show was purely satirical and not malicious…

 http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/85471/april-18-2007/national-library-week—frank-mccourt

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/182853/april-18-2007/national-library-week—sebastian-junger

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/187342/october-07-2008/the-red-lending-menace