The Book Meadow

A frenzy of joy...

2008-07-17T10:26:00.000-07:00

Color this blogger PSYCHED!!!! Today is my third day as the Library Director of a small prep school library in Western Massachusetts. So far every day has yielded something else to thrill me beyond belief. First, my library was a stop on the underground railroad (no lie!), escaped slaves actually hid in the basement. Second, the coffee and bakery down the street makes coffee iced cubes, so that when they melt in your coffee they don't water it down. And third, here is a smattering of their summer book list (organized by subject): Lord of the Flies by William Golding, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie, A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Husseini, What is the What by Dave Eggers, The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, One Hundred Years of Solitude (in Spanish) by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. For Art: Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon (one of my favorite reads), Maus, A Survivor's Tale by Art Spiegelman, The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. And, get this, they have a reading list for Phys Ed. Did you hear me... A reading list for Physical Education!!! Including The Teammates by David Halberstam, In These Girls, Hope is a Muscle by Madeleine Blais and A Walk In the Woods by Bill Bryson. They have a math reading list. This place is awesome. So much to read and do, I don't even know where to start. Holy Granola, this rocks!

wow, I'm a lazy blogger

2008-06-18T18:21:00.000-07:00

So many books, so little time. I have been reading a ton of YA books these past two months in mental preparation for my NEW JOB! Woo hoo!!! In July I will become the library director at a small prep school in Massachusetts.

So, what have I been reading?

The Golden Compass -- Phillip Pullman. I really enjoyed this. The story took a lot of concentration. It wasn't mindless reading. Big anti-Church sentiment. Great characters. The main little girl was kick-ass!

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume I: The Pox Party-- M.T. Anderson. Disturbing, interesting, let-down of an ending. Not sure what all the fuss was about, but the concept was horrifically fascinating.So Yesterday-- Scott Westerfeld. I felt compelled to read something trendy and that girls might like. I was pleasantly surprised. The main character is a 17 year-old 'trend hunter' who looks for fashion innovators/innovations, photographs them and provides them to a fashion consultant in the employ of a large company (possibly one that puts swooshes on all their sports shoes.) He mets an 'innovator' who laces her sneakers an a 'fetch' style and they proceed to hook up and solve the disappearance of the protagonist's employer. The young woman with the fetch shoelaces is a great fearless leader. Westerfeld has another book called Peeps that has a vampire theme. Might be a better read.

Currently reading a mobile library mystery. More on that later.

Dinotopia

2008-05-03T08:34:00.000-07:00

We saw James Gurney, author of Dinotopia, speak at The Odyssey bookshop last weekend. He was great. He drew for us and spoke to everyone (kids between the ages of 6 and 14 and their parents) as if we were all fellow amateur paleontologists and artists. His enthusiasm was infectious and I felt that he made us all complicit in his curiousity. He spoke about questioning professional paleontologists about how the large, long-necked dinosaurs would drink, and about how a city made for both humans and dinosaurs might look.

At the end he signed all of our books and drew illustrations for us. He was amazing and although I had not yet read Dinotopia (nor has Max) we fell in love right a way! He is a gracious man who seemed to make everyone feel that they could share his brilliant mind and if we hadn't had these thoughts it's just merely a coincidence and we would all, of course, stumble upon such questions and answers in due time.

The one small snafu was that The Odyssey didn't have copies of his first book, and in fact we went to every bookstore in Hadley, Amherst and Northampton and could not find a copy. But we are working on getting a copy and we now have the latest book Journey to Chandara anxiously awaiting a read.

Thank you Mr. Gurney for sharing your world with us!

Here's a picture of his Waterfall city.

The People of the Book

2008-05-03T07:52:00.000-07:00

I finally finished Geraldine Brook's wonderful book-- The People of the Book. Told from the point of view of a young Australian rare books expert, it tells the story of the Sarajevo Haggadah-- the first illumanated Jewish manuscript from the 15th century. This book spoke to me on many levels. As a person who holds Passover as the highlight of the Jewish year, and someone who loves used books not only because they are books and cheaper than new, but because the volumes themselves hold their own history, I found this book to be delightful. The parts about repairing antiquarian volumes, and the history of the haggadah itself were breath taking and clearly the subject of love for the author. The parts about Hanna, the woman doing the restoration, were a little lame and contrived. She was not a character as much as a conduit. But that was fine because the story of the book itself was really the main story and clearly the passion of the author.

I think this book would be wonderful to read back to back with Sheridan Hay's The Secret of Lost Things about a young kiwi bibliophile working in The Strand Bookstore in NYC and following the mystery of a missing Melville manuscript.

You can learn more about the author Geraldine Brooks and the Sarajevo Haggadah by listening to the amazon.com podcast.

Don't Mess With Our Access!

2008-04-09T06:09:00.000-07:00

Today's Librarian Superhero is: Gloria Won, a librarian at the University of San Francisco!!!

I heard a story today on NPR (how often do I say that, it's annoying!) Anyway-- there is this database called 'Popline' and it's the largest database on reproductive rights. Apparently they blocked the search term: 'abortion'. When Michael Klag, the dean of Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, which maintains the POPLINE database found out that this search function had been removed, he immediately had it reinstated. Here's a link to the article.

How, might you ask, did Michael Klag find out that the search function had been rendered dysfunctional in the first place? "The block was discovered by medical librarians doing routine searches." Gloria Won, USF librarian, discovered that Popline had decided to turn the term abortion into a "stop word." This means if you search the term 'abortion' you get zero hits.

Won is quoted as saying: "...abortion is a perfectly good noun, there's nothing wrong with it," she says. "And we sent it out to some library list-servs so medical librarians would know about this, and it just spiraled after that."

Woo hoo for Won!

E.L. Doctorow at WNEC

2008-04-08T17:47:00.000-07:00

I went to see E.L. Doctorow speak at WNEC (full disclosure, I'm a librarian there). He spoke about religion and writing. His premise was wonderful, if a little esoteric. Some of the highlights included his idea that there are two types of people who believe that if it is written it must be true-- children and fundamentalists. He told a beautiful story about his grandparents and parents following the same path of secular men and religiously Jewish women.
But I personally had two favorite parts. The first was when he was talking about the importance of librarians in the lives of writers. He said that librarians are the keepers of the canon by which a writer lives. And when he was asked about tips for young writers he said (and I'm paraphrasing here) "Read, read widely and voraciously. Read anything you can get your hands on."
I was so thrilled with this piece of advice because I am a reader. I never stop. I finish one book and the next day I start another. Often I have more than one book going at a time. But I truly believe that many people believe that they can have innate talent without doing the work. In our culture we praise 'talent' without expressing the need for hard work. Example: Musicians should just be born that way or be discovered as a child prodigies, but the idea of hours of practice or years of training is distasteful to us. I believe I can tell when a writer is not a reader. They often fail to recognize the history inherent in a certain theme or they mistake an idea that has often been examined in literature as something that is uniquely theirs. I also find that writers who don't read don't know about creating word paintings and don't know how critical it is to choose the right words to connecting with the audience. They can often focus on basic plot function or character introduction to a fault. They can also be clueless about the editing process. All of this seems to be a function of our concept that we all have a story to tell, therefore, we are all writers. Or that if a person has 'promise' then the practice is not as important.

E.L. Doctorow has thrown down a gauntlet for all of us in higher ed. Our students must read. They must read widely and they must read our historically significant writers to understand from where our cultural touchstones have come. I have often railed against the cultural hegemonic 'lists' of our legacy of Western civilization, ala Allan Bloom, in "The Closing of the American Mind". On the other hand, I don't want our students favoring The Simpsons to the exclusion of Shakespeare, or Family Guy instead of Faulkner.

On the down side I felt that Mr. Doctorow was not fully able to answer audience questions. And I am not sure about his idea that a person's religion or culture is not central to their writing. I feel that most of E.L. Doctorow's work is very much tied to his Jewish heritage. Maybe not his religion, but certainly his culture and his frame of reference. Maybe that is only evident to other Jewish people, I don't know. But I do know that if someone references an Easter dinner or Christmas morning. I am not always able to feel if the writing was authentic. But I am able to see the references and the themes of the culture of literature. I get those references because that is my culture. And it is a culture that we all can share. It's not about where you come from, or how you celebrate your holidays. It's about reading.. and reading and reading.

The People of the Book

2008-04-07T09:36:00.000-07:00

I am currently reading The People of the Book, by Geraldine Brooks. So far it's really cool. It's a fictional account of the Sarajevo Haggadah.

Alison Bechdel at Amherst

2008-04-07T08:35:00.001-07:00

Alison Bechdel
Originally uploaded by fototineke

Ok, so this photo was taken at when I saw her at Amherst last Wednesday evening. But it could have been! I was a little too embarrassed to start snapping photos at such an small setting. Plus I was sitting and chatting with her girlfriend, so it just felt too weird.

Anyway, it was a great talk. She read from her memoir 'FunHome' and I was reminded how poignant it was and how much she relies on bibliography to tell the story of her life and her fathers. Both of her parents were English teachers and much of the action takes place in relationship to the books they were reading at the time. When her father and mother were courting via letters, he was in the army, much of their narrative was based on F. Scott Fitzgerald. And Alison's coming out had much more to do with literary discovery than actual discovery, although there's some of that too!

Alison also spoke at great length about her artistic process and technique. It was fascinating for someone who doesn't even draw stick figures. She is truly one of the most organically geek-y smart people I've ever seen. I was awed!

Thinking about Dr. King

2008-04-03T07:03:00.001-07:00

Tomorrow it will be 40 years since the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. 40 years! I know this as well as I know my own birthday because I was born on March 4th, 1968 and Dr. King was killed on April 4th 1968. This makes my birthday forever linked to his death. When I was little my mother always told me that this meant that working for social justice was central to my being. Nice mom, no pressure there. I am sure that I will never be able to live up to this central creed, but I do my best.

After Max was born we decided that he would have a baby naming instead of a bris. The bris is the traditional way a male child is brought into the covenant of Judaism (it is a ritual circumcision done 8 days after birth). This is an ancient ritual that goes back to Abraham. In contrast, up until recently, when a girl was born there was no covenant to bring her into the Jewish faith. In the past 20 or so years Jews(non-orthodox) have been doing baby naming ceremonies for girls to welcome them into the faith. This seems not to be as binding as the bris, which is also known as the 'covenant of blood'. However, I believe strongly that as our society grows more egalitarian, so our rituals should reflect that. Babies of both genders should be brought into the Jewish faith in the same way. And since I completely disagree with circumcision for girls, the only reasonable alternative is to forgo the brit (or bris) for boys and do baby naming ceremonies for all babies.

The reason I am providing this background is that it is an important part of Max's birth story, and tied to the memory of Dr. King. Lisa and I decided that instead of a bris we would do a baby naming for Max. We chose Martin Luther King weekend for this celebration. In preparation for this ceremony we chose to incorporate many quotes from Dr. King and welcomed Max into our family which is as tied to our belief in social justice and equality as we our to the bonds of Judaism. I hope that in this way our family will continue the tradition of being tied to the memory and beliefs of Dr. King. I hope that as I can not think of my birthday without thinking of Dr. King, Max will think of his ceremony of welcome as inextricably linked to social justice and a celebration of Dr. King.

Brookland

2008-03-28T07:37:00.000-07:00

Yesterday. What a busy day. I finally finished Brookland by Emily Barton. It takes place in the late 18th and early 19th century in Brooklyn, New York. The primary characters are the daughters and owners of Winship Daughters Gin distillery. Although I did love the characters and felt very attached to them, their lifestyles, actions and conversations were hardly believable for young women in the late 1700s. The narrator is the eldest daughter, Prue, who is the main owner of the distillery and the behind-the-scenes architect of the first Brooklyn bridge. Throughout the novel she is at times writing her story as a letter to her eldest daughter who has moved away and is about to have her own first child. Despite the twin flaws of believability and plot points, it was a really nice book. As I said, I felt very drawn to the characters and there is a part in the beginning where the river has frozen over and Prue and her sister are escorted across the river for their first trip to Manhattan, by their father. I loved the image of a family in the 1780s making their way across the river from their little hamlet to a 'big' city filled with new and exciting adventures. It was wonderful to imagine this trip. All in all the novel had it's fatal flaws but was an enjoyable journey. And I learned more about the distilling of gin than I ever thought possible.

On my way home from my PVAAL meeting...

2008-03-27T19:21:00.000-07:00

Oops. On my way home, I was so excited about library stuff that I ran a red light and got stopped by a cop. So, He asks me for my license and reg and asks me: "Where are you coming from?" And I say: "Do I really have to tell you, you're gonna laugh at me". And he says: "Well, no, not if you don't want to". And so I told him: "Well, I was at a meeting of Academic Librarians." and in fact he did laugh. So I proceed to tell him that I was so sorry for running the red light and I'm usually very careful, but I was so excited about some stuff that I heard at the meeting that I must have just missed seeing the light. And by this time he was laughing so hard at my honesty routine that he let me off with a warning.

Truthfully, I knew he'd let me off. Who would ticket a librarian driving home from a meeting?! It was pretty funny though.

PVAAL meeting

2008-03-27T18:50:00.001-07:00

I am so psyched! I went to a PVAAL (Pioneer Valley Academic Librarians) meeting tonight and I feel so energized. I talked to a lot of librarians and got so many ideas. It was totally great. I think I haven't been so excited by new ideas in a while. G. told me about how he's using libguides to do instruction in his library. I heard a great talk about adjunct faculty, publishing and, generally, being excited about reference and stuff we do in libraries by one of my favorite professors from Library school. Here's a link to her talk

It was so nice to be around librarians who are excited about what they do and who come up with new ideas and thoughts about how to get our services to people. It was really refreshing and it made me realize that it's totally nice to get out in the world and talk to other librarians, not about the piddly politics in our libraries or how much work we have, but about what excites us about librarianship and how we can use new technologies to reach people...
not to mention, older 'technology' or no tech at all. I was talking to two librarians after the shindig and I mentioned that I created a del.icio.us account for one of my departments, and I emailed it to them with instructions on how to log in and add resources, etc. and they didn't respond to my email. And (duh) my librarian pals said (in much nicer terms): "get off your ass and go to them. Make a connection. Have lunch and discuss it". Now why didn't I think of that?!

Bookstores in W. Mass

2008-03-23T05:40:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I took my mom bookstoring, one of my favorite activities, in honor of my 40th birthday (which was a few weeks ago). We followed the advice of an article in the New York Times titled: Well-Marked Trails for Bibliophiles. We visited Whately Antiquarian Books and The Meeting House in So. Deerfield. They have been on my list to visit for a while, but I hadn't gotten a chance to go before yesterday. So, Whately Antiquarian is home to 35 rare book dealers. I found a first ed. illustrated Rudyard Kipling for $25-- absolutely a beautiful book with a mix of color and b/w drawings. I can't wait to read it with Max. I also picked up a mint condition Pickwick Papers, with type large enough that I may actually be able to read it. What is the problem with some of these old Dickens editions from the 1920s and 30s? The type is so small and the kerning so tight I can never read for more than 5 minutes. But this one is totally readable. Now the trick is to read it!

I also bought a first edition of my favorite Vikram Seth book-- The Golden Gate and a Dave Eggers novel.

Arthur and the Forbidden City

2008-03-10T07:49:00.000-07:00

Well, I didn't love this book, but I adored how fun it was to read aloud with Max. I have such fun discussing literature and reading to him. I will be sorry about the day when we don't read together. I have learned that I love reading out loud and I am pretty good at it.

But the other day we were reading and the line was: "Arthur looked at something like a pig might look at a remote control." and Max said: "That's not a very good description because I don't think I know how a pig looks at a remote control." and I thought: "He's right. It's a poor analogy because it doesn't really describe how Arthur is making sense of what he's seeing."

Literature and kids go together like ice cream and hot fudge! Maybe not all kids, but one can hope.

Vita Sackville-West

2008-03-10T07:10:00.000-07:00

grew up in a house that had 52 staircases and 365 rooms. Think about that. How freaky!

I love how much...

2008-02-23T17:30:00.000-08:00

my kid loves books. Yesterday we flew home from Florida. We had a stop-over in North Carolina from around 7:30-9:30. Max and I cuddled in a seat and read, read, read. We are currently reading Luc Besson's Arthur duet-- Arthur and the Minimoys and Arthur and the Forbidden City. Granted we were at an exciting part-- 100pgs. to the end of the book. But people stopped and listened; they smiled at us. One man said that I could read audiobooks for a living. Another said that he wished he could sit near us on the plane so that he could hear what happened in the story. Many people complemented Max on how well he listened. Max, Lisa and I discussed what was happening and a few times Max didn't understand a part and we went back and re-read it with some explanation.

I watched people in the airport with their children a lot this week and I did not see much (if any) reading aloud. Kids were playing video games, taking pictures with cell phones, watching dvds and playing on computers. Some older kids were reading to themselves. I did not see families reading to young children. However, I noticed when we did it people were delighted. They wanted to be a part of it. Many older women smiled at me and Max, as if remembering times when they read to their young children.

We are all really enjoying the story, despite a poor review in School Library Journal. And we had seen the movie, so that might have helped us see the action in our minds. But we read and read for hours to finish the first book in the duet. When we were done, Max asked me: Is there an epilogue or something to tell us what happens next? Well, I don't need to tell you that I kvelled! My kid knows what an epilogue is and he knows how it is used as a literary device. How much does he rock?!

So we finished Arthur and the Minimoys and started Arthur and the Forbidden City. I read ahead after Max fell asleep and it gets pretty romantic/kiss-y. I hope he'll still enjoy it, but I can't imagine that it will be as fun as the adventure/battle parts. I guess we'll find out.

Ragtime

2008-02-17T05:22:00.000-08:00

E.L. Doctorow is coming this spring to the college where I work. Many are looking forward to this visit and so we are all reading his works. I have just finished re-reading Ragtime and remembering how much I enjoyed it for it's seamless weaving together of a strong, beautiful quilt of a story, and it's vivid imagery.

I loved seeing the lower east side through Evelyn's eyes: "...Hebrew letters looking to her eyes like arrangements of bones". And of course the very erotic scene between Evelyn and Emma Goldman. It was interesting that Mother's Younger Brother became a participant in this scene between two women instead of merely a voyeur. I believe had the book been written today he might have been the unseen watcher, of a tender yet highly charged encounter between Emma and Evelyn, but in the 1970s our dominant cultural imagination had to see the climax as the providence of a man. (see pgs 52-54 in Random House hardcover edition).

I also found the end chapters of Mother's Younger Brother's journey to Mexico to fight with Pancho Villa and our own Nation's foray into that same war as very pertinent to our situation today. Teddy Roosevelt accuses Woodrow Wilson of "finding war abhorrent". However, history shows us that after Wilson's practice war in Mexico and his entrance into WWI on our country's behalf, he apparently didn't find it so abhorrent as to avoid it. The sentence that makes it so personal for me is: "Neither Theodore Roosevelt's son Quentin, who was to die in a dogfight over France, nor the old Bull Moose himself who was to die in grief not long thereafter, would survive Wilson's abhorrence of war."

It makes you wonder how gung-ho our President would be to wage war if every time he did so his own daughters were enlisted to be on the front lines. War seems easy to wage if someone else's children are fighting it.

Anyway, I digress. It was a great read and I'm glad to have the opportunity to visit and re-visit with a writer of Doctorow's talent. I am looking forward to hosting him this spring. I am also looking forward to hosting Spring (I am soooo over winter).

Barker at the grounds at the Vermont state fair, Rutland (LOC)

2008-01-21T08:17:00.001-08:00

Barker at the grounds at the Vermont state fair, Rutland (LOC)
Originally uploaded by The Library of Congress

From the Library of Congress flickr site. Barker at the grounds of the Vermont state fair, Rutland. 1941.

Deb on LC Flickr site...

2008-01-21T08:04:00.000-08:00

On Jan. 18 the Library of Congress opened it's new pilot project on flickr. The LC has uploaded over 3000 photos from it's collection onto a flickr site called The Commons. I am looking forward to viewing them and hopefully adding tags when I get a chance.

Here is a link to The Commons.
Here is a link to the Library of Congress blogpost
AND
the NPR story about it.

Hugo Cabret Wins the Caldecott!

2008-01-15T20:39:00.000-08:00

The Invention of Hugo Cabret was one of my favorite books this year. It is a combination of beautiful prose and breathtaking pencil drawings. Sometimes the prose takes the story and sometimes the pictures. Here's a link to the book's website. It's well worth a look!

The Invention of Hugo Cabret.

Here are some of the drawings. Magnificent!

Me at Blogging workshop

2008-01-15T20:32:00.001-08:00

Me at Blogging workshop
Originally uploaded by deblev

Blogging Workshop

2008-01-15T20:26:00.000-08:00

Shame on me. I taught a Blogging workshop for the Valley Press Club last Wednesday (almost a week ago), but I barely mentioned it here. Color me chagrinned because one of the things I taught in the class was timeliness of posts. sigh.
Well, it was my first blogging workshop to an audience larger than my college community. I think it went very well for a first try. See photos above.

Matrimony

2008-01-14T06:55:00.000-08:00

Nope, not a treatise on marriage, gay or straight. It's a quick read I just finished. A friend from work encouraged me to break out of my monstrous book queue to read this instead. It grabbed me at the beginning because the main character started college the same year I did, 1986, and at an alternative college in Western Massachusetts, that could have been Hampshire, my alma mater. It was called Graymont and wasn't as much a portrait of Hampshire as it seemed initially.

I enjoyed the book due to it's Hampshire/not-Hampshire connection, but the situations were contrived and the characters were a little aloof. However, I'm a little embarrassed to admit this, I get a certain pleasure out of a book that I can read quickly (in under two weeks) and feel accomplished when I finish it. Silly, but I'm such a slow reader, it just makes me feel good.

Cheers to snow!

Charlotte's Web

2008-01-10T17:59:00.002-08:00

Max, Lisa and I recently listened to George Plimpton read Charlotte's web. We listened to it on the way to NY. Max really loved it and I had forgotten how delightful it is. E.B White was a total word smith and so many of his images were delightful. What fun! I really love listening to books on the ipod on long trips. Almost as much as I love reading aloud. I hope Max will want to read Trumpet of the Swan.

Blogging workshop...

2008-01-09T07:47:00.000-08:00

I'm about to teach my blogging workshop to professional communicators. I am a little nervous, but I think it will go ok. I hope I've prepared enough.

Hawksbill Sea Turtle

2008-01-07T08:26:00.001-08:00

Hawksbill Sea Turtle
Originally uploaded by takau99

I am new to SCUBA diving, I just received my certification last summer. I love to look at underwater photography on the web, so I often look at flickr.com. I joined the SCUBA Diving group on flickr so I can see photos like this one!

Chabon v. Diaz

2008-01-02T12:29:00.001-08:00

V.
No, it's not a welterweight match-up on ESPN. Michael Chabon, pulitzer prize winner for The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and Junot Diaz author of the much-lauded The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao are two contemporary writers. Chabon writes from a place where his Judaism and that of his characters is very central. His recent novel, The Yiddish Policeman's Union, takes place in a slightly alternate universe where, after WWII, Jews lost the battle for Israel/Jerusalem to the Palestinians who lived there and were given a temporary homeland in Sitka, Alaska. The area is about to be reverted from a temporary home for the Jews back to Alaskan territory and everyone is having a little trouble with this.

Junot Diaz writes about Domincans in the Diaspora, namely New Jersey. His book is about a dungeons and dragons, nerd-y, sci-fi writing Dominican kid and his family in N.J. A lot of the book takes place in the Trujillo horrors of the island.

Why am I comparing these two? Well, they are very similar. Chabon writes a lot about the Jewish diaspora, peppers his writing with Yiddish-isms and Jewish asides that a non-Jewish reader wouldn't know and he makes no effort to translate or explain. Diaz writesa bout the Domincan diaspora, peppers his writing with Dominican-isms, Domincan/Spanish slang (I think it's Dominican slang because it was not at all similar to Mexican slang which I learned a lot of when I lived with a bunch of Oaxicans in San Francisco), and makes no effort to translate or explain.

The two books, read back-to-back, were very interesting for me because with the Chabon, I felt like the insider and wondered how people on the outside (ie: non-Jews) would relate to this book and with the Diaz, I felt completely on the outside, not in on the jokes or inside view at all and like I was missing a big part of the story. It was an interesting journey to read these so close together. In the end, I really loved both of them and thought they were both great books. However, I do feel like I connected with the Chabon on a gut level and I enjoyed the Diaz on an educational/peer-into-a-strangers-life sort of way. Two very different reactions and two very similarly styled writers. How cool.

2008-01-02T10:09:00.001-08:00

Mobile post sent by deblev using Utterz. Replies. mp3

NPR series on blogging

2007-12-29T04:07:00.000-08:00

In honor of the tenth anniversary of the blog, npr did a series on blogging.

NPR piece on the tin/aluminium annversary of the Blog...

2007-12-24T15:29:00.000-08:00

NPR had a piece this morning on the Tenth anniversary of the weblog. In addition to the idea that most blogs are poorly written and pointless (an often heard criticism, get out your thick-skinned suit), they have nice tables about who blogs and why they blog and an interesting 'audio blog' that sent Max into gales of laughter this morning. They're going to have another installment tomorrow. I love radio.

Titles for Max for 2008...

2007-12-24T15:24:00.000-08:00

Here are a few titles we can read as a family in 2008. In addition to reading very long chapter books, we have taken to listening to audiobooks on the ipod in the car.

Here are some titles:

Wind in the Willows
Wrinkle in Time
Three Musketeers
Call of the Wild
Fudge books

Suggestions welcome. He's 6, loves nuanced, interesting stories, mostly about animals, but will tolerate people stories if they're interesting (have magic or fairies, etc.).

cheers, deb.

The festival of lights has brought us...

2007-12-09T15:15:00.000-08:00

more Spiderwick Chronicles
The Chronicles of Spiderwick: A Grand Tour of the Enchanted World, Navigated by Thimbletack".

The second Harry Potter. My verdict is still out on whether we should be reading this to Max, age 6. But he loves the story, and is following it, enthralled. And I must admit it is fun to read aloud. I also wonder what other parents think about what is acceptable book to read, or to watch. I ask this because I took Max to his daycare the other day (he had a snow day, and I wanted to get some work done) and the kids (3 boys, between age 5 and 7) were watching Transformers, rated PG-13 for violence and sexual content. Two of the boys who were watching this movie had brought it from home, and when I said I was uncomfortable with my 6 year old watching a pg-13 movie with so much violence, I felt like an over-protective freak. Do all little kids watch things like that? Are Lisa and I the only parents (who aren't evangelical home-schoolers) who are so compulsive about what our kid watches?

So after that little tirade... Lisa got me the new David Isay book: Listening Is an Act of Love: A Celebration of American Life from the StoryCorps Project.

And our friends got Max (us) a great Lemony Snicket find: The Latke Who Couldn't Stop Screaming: A Christmas Story. This cracked me up!

And I'm getting Lisa the book: How Doctors Think. About (how intuitive is this) how doctors think.

Mom gave me The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. And I am so looking forward to it.

I'm sure we had other book related gifts, but I can't remember what they are.

Best books of 2007

2007-12-05T17:50:00.000-08:00

Today On Point did an hour on the best books of 2007. Here's the show. The guests were:
Dwight Garner, senior editor at The New York Times Book Review
Oscar Villalon, book editor for the San Francisco Chronicle
Kathy Langer, top book buyer for The Tattered Cover Bookstore in Denver

I don't know why these end-of-year editions, picks of books, will-they-make-it-won't-they, cattle call of books makes me so horny. I guess it goes with the job. What I should do is look at the past 15 years and see how the picks have held up.

So, what made it?

Fiction:
Oscar Wao, in my reading queue
Tree of Smoke (Denis Johnson seems too macho for me, give me my Chabon anyday)
The Shadow catcher, looks good
The Reluctant Fundamentalist
Abstinence Teacher

Nonfiction
How Doctors Think
Foreskin's Lament
How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read (a personal favorite on title alone, although to be fair, I haven't read it).
The Nine (Please tell me none of the, ahem, moderates are dragging ass into work!).

2007-11-28T10:24:00.000-08:00

As a crazy bibliophile I am always curious about people and their reading habits. How do people read? What do they read? Are they reading? Why aren't they reading more? Why aren't people more excited to talk to me about what I'm reading and to tell me what they're reading... So, I find this whole new wave of ebooks, namely the Amazon Kindle thing really interesting. On the one hand, I would love to carry many books without carrying many books. On the other hand the idea seems insidious, a great gap in the digital divide and another vehicle for advertising. Also the name 'Kindle' is sort of evocative of Farenheit 451.

Here's Steven Levy's Newsweek article on it: http://www.newsweek.com/id/70983

and 'On Point' did a show about the Kindle with Steven Levy and some sweet old bibliophile dude: http://www.onpointradio.org/shows/2007/11/20071120_b_main.asp

I'd love to know if people are considering Kindles for their libraries and what they think of them. Are you drooling for one, or vaguely disgusted.

2007-11-28T07:34:00.000-08:00

Look Me in the Eye—John Elder Robison—

This was a pretty good book. Nothing terribly exciting, but on the other hand, it wasn’t too poorly written. It was a quick read. However, I must admit this new thread of ‘tell-all’ memoirs about adults with Asperger’s syndrome are becoming a bit redundant. And in reading this one, I carefully looked for the battery of neurological/psychological testing that the author took to determine the diagnosis of Asperger’s Syndrome and found none. Mr. Robison was told by a social friend that he exhibited some of the traits of Asperger’s Syndrome. And the author read a lot of literature about the subject, but it seems that he was not diagnosed by a professional. This was disturbing to me. The parts about KISS concerts were fun.

Born Standing Up—Steve Martin—

I got an advanced readers copy at the Book Expo last June. It was a nice book. Quick read, not very funny. I do hope they did another bout of editing before the actual publication.

The Spiderwick debacle

2007-11-28T07:23:00.000-08:00

Oops. Bad Libarian, no big cookie! It would seem that Max and I started the second Spiderwick series (Beyond the Spiderwick chronicles) before reading the first. Color me ashamed. So, we've corrected this, bought some of the earlier ones and even listened to all of the first series on a car trip to NY. For anyone who is interested the series is:

1. The Field Guide, 2. The Seeing Stone, 3. Lucinda's Secret, 4. The Ironwood Tree, 5. The Wrath of Mulgrath

The audiobooks are read by Mark Hamill of Star Wars fame. Very enjoyable!

The Spiderwick Chronicles

2007-10-28T07:25:00.000-07:00

We just started reading The Spiderwick Chronicles last eve. It's a slow start, but I'm already into it. I think Max is too. The real test is if he wants to continue it today. Keeping my fingers crossed.

I hate it when I get really into a book and Max loses interest. It happened with Ursala LeGuin's Catwings, and I was truly bummed out. But, if he doesn't want to read it, we don't. I think I'll finish these on my own though!

Opting out of consumer stuff...

2007-10-28T06:16:00.000-07:00

The Levheim's are having a crisis.

Max had a birthday last week and got LOTS of cool new stuff. However, he still feels unsatisfied and is asking for even more stuff. Part of this need for stuff can be chalked up to his obsessive personality, part because he is going through an unhappy time (poor little guy). I also place part of the blame on our 'if it hurts, buy more stuff' society. Whatever the reason, it is distressing to have a little person who always wants more and believes the next greatest toy/thing will make him a happy person.

So, we are trying to teach him about how having too much stuff won't necessarily make you happy, a realistic concept of how much stuff he has in comparison to most people, and some notion of working for social justice and how this is all tied together. Whew-- big concepts for a little guy!

As of today, we are taking a 'fast', and not buying new consumer goods for a month. Obviously we can buy food, toilet paper, etc. but nothing else. Wish us luck! We're learning about alternative consumption by viewing a blog about 'the compact': http://groups.yahoo.com/group/thecompact/

We're looking for other suggestions.

Satire in context...

2007-10-24T06:42:00.000-07:00

I heard a piece on npr's 'Talk of the Nation' the other day about The Onion, the "fake news" newspaper. Greg Beato, columnist of Reason magazine, wrote a column called: Amusing Ourselves to Death, (a nod to Neil Postman) about the rise in popularity of The Onion while all other major newspapers are losing readership at an alarming rate. Beato said: "The Onion recently achieved a 60 percent increase in print circulation and attracts more than two million online readers per week."

Here is a link to interview with Beato on NPR: Satirical 'Onion' Attracts Readers Online, in Print.

Having quite a bit of contact with students at a four year college in Massachusetts, I am fascinated by this trend. I find that my students sometimes find articles in The Onion funny, but often they don't have the facts or the context to truly understand the underlying piece of news. This is the same with The Daily Show and Stephen Colbert. If the readership does not have the background to understand the Iraq war, or the debate and eventual veto of the SChip program, then the humor often clouds the issue. For example, one recent article in The Onion was: Reaganomics Finally Trickles Down To Area Man. This is clearly only funny if you know about trickle-down economics, and/or if you knew about the policies instituted during the Reagan presidency. Otherwise it just sounds like it should be funny.

Michael Chabon...

2007-10-22T08:27:00.000-07:00

is a total literary stud. His writing is sublime and very cool. I just finished Yiddish Policemen's Union and I was in awe. His book is so full of yiddish idioms, and using Yiddish words in an unusual manner to replace words in the everyday lexicon. For example, he used the word 'shoyfer' to mean 'cell phone'. A shofar, as most Jews will know is an announcing tool made from a rams horn to 'call' people. However, I can't imagine most people who aren't Jewish knowing this, or being able to extrapolate this knowledge to mean slang for 'cell phone'. Chabon's novel is peppered throughout with this type of 'yiddish-ism'. I love it, it feels like being in on a really cool private joke. However, the Jewish population being what it is, probably less than 2% of the world population, I can't imagine that many people are going to be 'in' on the joke. That said, this was a great novel, and I was thrilled to have read it.

American Pastoral

2007-10-22T07:27:00.000-07:00

I am a book queue fanatic. I pile books next to my bed, on the front of the bookshelf, on the table in the upstairs hallway. These are books I AM GOING TO READ! Sometimes I think they can act as a bunker to protect me from unwelcome intruders, ward off infection, etc. I have been thinking about starting a podcast where I interview people about what's in their book queue. Here's a link to a photo of my current book queue on flickr:
So, why am I telling you this. Because no matter how much I plan, pile and desire-- I do not actually read that much each day, maybe 20 minutes. So, I started this wonderful piece of American literature, one of the 20 best of the 20th century, and have yet to finish it. It does rock though.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

2007-10-17T12:21:00.000-07:00

So, I haven't posted for a while and I can only hope that I remember everything I've read over the summer/autumn. I will try to post in chronological order.

So, the last Harry Potter. Here are my scattered thoughts. It was... good. Lot's of loose ends were tied. I loved (SPOILER ALERT)the way they brought Percy back into the fold. Hermione's tent/evening bag was wonderful candy for the imagination.

Harry's a really dark character, isn't he? I hope after the whole Voldemort thing he was able to lighten up a bit and get a sense of humor.

I also read the first one (to my son, out loud). Reading it out loud was fun, but I got a bit tired of explaining why at age 5 he wasn't ready for books 2-7. Truthfully I didn't think he was ready for the first one, but you pick your battles.

So, all that explanation to say: I loved the continuity with Griphook in book one. I also read book six because I couldn't remember what the heck a horcrux was, and why it was so important. So, all in all it was quite a Harry Potter summer!

The Secret of Things Lost

2007-06-27T19:03:00.000-07:00

By Sheridan Hay.

This book is a thinly veiled piece of fiction where the most vivid character is The Strand Bookstore in Lower Manhattan. A young, very naive, woman, after losing her mother (and only family) moves from Tasmania to NYC and gets a job at a bookstore called, The Arcade. Anyone who knows The Strand will recognize it in this novel. The plot deals with a mystery surrounding the discovery of an unknown manuscript of Hermann Melville. But the plot is really just a convenient way to enable the author her descriptions of this quirky haven for crazed bibliophiles. How do I know this? Because I worked at The Strand in my early 20s and it is unmistakable, right down to the miserly strange owner. When I worked there, in 1994, employees were paid in cash in these ubiquitous, tiny, manila envelopes. Every Friday was pay day and (coincidentally) employee book buying day. The book buying day meant that employees would get 50% off of their purchases. I saw many an itchy bibliophile (which describes almost all of the employees) mumbling to themselves about rent and "Oh, I should pay my utilities, but..." as they turned over large portions of the contents of those little manila folders back to the store.

This book is wonderful. The character sketches, the descriptions of the store, and even the thriller about Melville will thrill the literature-obsessed in all Readers (and you know who you are).

National Book Awards

2006-11-17T05:49:00.000-08:00

I forgot to write this yesterday, but Richard Powers won the National Book Award for Fiction. Why is this so exciting? Because I believe that my mom discovered him. I know that sounds ridiculous, but my mom has an uncanny ability to sniff out and recommend the most phenomenal works of fiction. Two years ago she recommended Richard Powers' novel, The Time of Our Singing, and it was one of the best books I've read in a decade. It begins in 1939 when a Germen Jewish emigre physicist goes to the Marian Anderson concert on the mall in Washington D.C. and meets a young African American woman studying to be a singer. They marry and have three children who they vow to raise beyond time, beyond race and steeped only in song. The epic follows the family through the civil rights era and to the present day. Powers won for his latest novel called The Echo Maker. I can't wait to read it!

So, kudos to mom (and Richard Powers) for her impeccable taste in contemporary fiction (and to Richard Powers for his beautiful writing).

Second Life and Asperger's Syndrome

2006-11-14T08:39:00.000-08:00

Rebecca Nesson made a point of importance (to me, because my son has Asperger's) -- and that is that Second Life is being used as a testing ground for people with Asperger's to practice social interaction without the pressure of face-to-face meetings. Here is a blog about this called Brigadoon.

Here are some other discussions about using Second Life for this purpose.

A second shot at life.

News.blog: 'Second Life' helps Asperger's

My question about this is that many of the problems with communication for people with Asperger's have with face-to-face interactions is about reading emotional queues on the faces of others, and learning how to interact with people in group settings. Second Life will not help with these problems.

Hmmm... not totally convinced about it's importance, but I'm open.

Teaching and Learning in a Virtual World

2006-11-14T08:02:00.000-08:00

Rebecca Nesson is teaching a class called "Cyberone: Law in the court of Public Opinion" at Harvard University. This course is offered in Second Life.

I'm not sure I understand why this class is being offered in Second Life vs. actual life or in a more conventional online setting. On the one hand I suppose it is a good experiment to see what the limits of Second Life are. But on the on the other hand I feel like we will look back on this in a few years and feel very silly about the clunkiness of the virtual experience. I sometimes wonder about these more 'meet-up' type social software experience whether we're just doing it because we can.

April 164 (a nom de librar for a person sitting next to me who shall not be named) wonders if in 100 years we'll be interacting like this in all areas of our life. Will we go to work like this? Will we see each other in real time at all?

As for me, I really like people, real people and I like to see them face-to-face and not in some virtual world. It feels too stilted and uncomfortable. I also don't like how the avatars in SL don't look like the people the represent (my own included).

Ok, now we're talking about building a virtual dance floor-- Queue BloodHound Gang-- "Da roof, da roof, da roof is on fire! We don't need no water let the M________________ Burn!.

How distracting is all this asynchronous goings on?

NerCOMP conference notes

2006-11-14T07:21:00.000-08:00

The Book Meadow

Social Software in the Classroom: Happy Marriage or Clash of Cultures?
Eric Gordon-- Assistant Professor of New Media

Students rely more on personal stories and anecdotal evidence. students demand that course material be directly relevant to their lives.
Napster slogan: Own Nothing; Have Everything.
The allure of access...

Aggregation, consolidation, convenience, manipulating and sharing content.

In sites like myspace and facebook students assume they are in private. The desire to interact in the 'chat' level. "look what I did!" "cool." It feels like young people are being doofuses on more levels than before and we're trying to use the same tools to engage young people and look cool while doing it. It reminds me of Amy Poehler's character in Mean Girls. she's totally into being a friend to her daughter instead of a parent and makes a fool of herself. She makes virgin margarita's for the girls and when asked if they're alcoholic she says: 'oh god no! Why do you want some?

Like I've said before, we should not be going to keggers to offer refernce services anymore than we should hang out on MySpace or Facebook.

A participant in the conference said: We (as academics) are entering their culture and asking them to particpate in ways that we would like them to participate. And they're saying: "No, you're in our culture and you must participate within our cultural framework."

I think this is a good point. We can't enter their culture and expect them to participate with our social norms.

My thought is that we should leave the MySpace and FaceBook to the kids and, if we use public social networks at all (the alternative being a WebCT closed network type of interaction) we might want to choose something more intellectual like LibraryThing or Del.icio.us.

"Truthiness"

2006-11-09T10:28:00.000-08:00

The Book Meadow

What is truthiness? Here's a entry in wikipedia about "truthiness" and wikipedia is referenced in the definition of truthiness. But my favorite example of "truthiness in action is this npr interview with Karl Rove, aka Bush's Brain.

How can we combat "truthiness"?

Cynacism, smarts and democracy

2006-11-09T08:53:00.000-08:00

The Book Meadow
First of all: "WOO HOO!!!". The dems won the house, most probably the senate (that is if George Allen will just concede already like a normal person and if Joe Liberman actually remains a democrat in name if not in deed).

But today I am thinking about how information works, both in a democracy and on the internet.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all about web 2.0 apps.

I love Flickr;

I have a Second Life avitar who is considerably more attractive than I am in my first life;

I am addicted to my bloglines account, watch youtube, and love wikipedia.

BUT I was just reading this article by Nicholas Lemann from the New Yorker called Amateur Hour.

And while the New Yorker is soooo old school media and the article is so three months ago I am trying to work on ideas for a class that I am teaching today about how to evaluate information on the web.

So, in addition to the million thoughts that came to my mind, you see I am such a quick thinker (insert sarcastic emoticon here), and I'm so hip (ibid) I even have my own blog... I did a little experiment.

I checked the front pages of three well known news outlets/aggregators and here is what I came up with:

The New York Times
Oh My News
AND
Digg.com

Now we know about the NY Times. Stuffy journalists, old school media, The Gray Lady

Ok, so who or what is Oh My News? Well according to it's Oh My News About Us page there's a President and CEO, a Senior Editor, a U.S. editor and untold numbers of citizen reports who work by a code of ethics.

So they're similar to actual reporters or journalists except they don't get paid and they may or may not be trained journalists.

So this is democracy, you don't have to go to school for it or get paid for it. But you still have to submit to "editorial authority". And unlike
an actual reporter you have no recourse to challenge the editorial authority. Pretty democratic.

Finally, let's take a look at www.digg.com. This is how digg.com describes itself: "Digg is all about user powered content. Every article on digg is submitted and voted on by the digg community. Share, discover, bookmark, and promote the news that's important to you!"

What's on digg.com today? The day after a major election, a change of power in our government and the dumping of the defense secretary... Well, let's see. Hmmm... South Park - Cartman continues his quest for the Nintendo Wii. The future of gaming. Interesting...

But the thing that makes me most uncomfortable is that when I first looked this morning the first article I found referring to the elections was a link to a video from youtube satirizing mid-term elections from Jon Stewart. Which, don't get me wrong, is funny. However, slightly inaccurate considering the mid term elections this time were incredibly important, hotly contested and swept out many, many incumbents. So, if you were to get your news only from digg.com what conclusions would you draw about what's going on in the world?

Seeing as we're getting our information from so many different sources, how can we make informed decisions about what we read?

Here are two ideas:

1. Get your news from a few different trusted news sources. Given the number of news sources, this can be overwhelming so I use a news reader or aggrigator to put it all in one place. See: my bloglines account

and

2. Apply consistent criteria to all information. How do we do this? Well I'm gonna show you...

So, what's my conclusion about all of this? Sure there's great new media-- I'm all jigg-y (insert old person using new slang emoticon here) with great new media-- slashdot and youtube, and great old media (I love the NYTimes book review section no matter how pretentious! And there is also old crap and newer crap. The only thing that can help you filter all of this information is by using your smarts, keeping an open mind and applying consistent standards to all information no matter how you ingest it!

My next post-- truthiness.

I do hope Cartman gets his wii....

Election Day!

2006-11-07T06:54:00.000-08:00

The Book Meadow
It's election day. We get a chance to change the future. Max, Lisa and I will be going to vote together, The Levheim voting block! Even thought Max is only 5, he has come with either Lisa or I to vote in every election since his birth. When Lisa took him to vote in the primary in September he wanted to set up a voting booth of his own when he got home. He got a ballot and voted for everyone so that none of the circles would be blank, we tried to explain that this strategy might be problematic in an actual voting situation, but he'd rather be symmetrical than vote strategically. Who can blame him, he's 5! Happy voting.

del.icio.us conference

2006-10-27T12:24:00.000-07:00

The Book Meadow
To see some of the cool things that I learned about, check out my del.icio.us bookmarks about this conference

Dartmouth October Conference-- Cool Tools and New Technologies

2006-10-27T11:29:00.000-07:00

The Book Meadow

I am sitting at the Dartmouth biomedical library Cool Tools and New Technologies conference. It's very fun, and I love talking about del.icio.us, Second Life, blogging, RSS, podcasting, etc. BUT Roy Tennant is talking about using Second Life for meeting our users where they are. I'm not sure if it makes sense to follow our users everywhere just because we can. I mean we know they go to keg parties, but we're not going to follow them there to offer reference services. Are we?

Other thoughts-- Meredith Farkas idea: Using wiki as an internal tool for communication, use: bad behavior plugin—looks at the behavior of the poster and decides if it’s a spambot or a person.

Batteries running low, more later. But just a thought-- if RSS feeds are supposed to make our lives so simple, why do people read so many of them?!

The Book Meadow

2006-10-17T17:26:00.000-07:00

The Book Meadow
Now reading...

I am currently reading White Teeth by Zadie Smith. I'm just beginning and I think it's a big chunk read. What I mean by that is it is best read when you have a big chunk of time so as not to destroy the narrative flow. And the flow is beautiful.

2006-10-17T13:11:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the Meadow

2006-10-17T11:07:00.000-07:00

Remember the old Bloom County cartoons where Milo, Opus and Cutter John used to sit around, stare up at the clouds and think about important issues, such as... "Just what are pear pimples for hairy fishnuts anyway?!" (see explanation: Bloom County comic . Well I thought I'd like to blog about the books I'm reading and hear about what other people are reading too, in the same 'easy as a summer day' way that I imagine Milo and Opus talked about things. I look forward to posting, and reading posts from other readers. Thanks, Deb