OWS and Libraries

A New York Times article about the library that Occupy Boston has set up. Hopefully you'll still be able to read the article - I'm not sure what NYT's paywall system is like.

Library Advocacy, but fun!

And just a tad profane - Go the F*ck to the Library.

Tuesday Library Post, 10/4/2011

You know, the problem with moving Library Day from Monday to Tuesday is that, on Monday, I used to go to the library in the evening, just before dinner. So, after the library, I would come home and make dinner, and then make my post. (yeah, right. Because I was always punctual on Mondays!). But, on Tuesdays, I'm going to library in the middle of the afternoon. (which is nice, incidentally. There's noone else there. Which isn't true, but there are fewer people there, anyway. Actually, right now the library is busy as a FEMA data collection point, so people are coming into the lobby to talk to FEMA folks about the property they lost in the flood. Today, there was also a computer class in the back of the library, upstairs. So there were people wandering in and out.*) So, I get home much much later, and the books I've selected, I've forgotten already. Hmmm.

Anyway. Two books this week.

Eoin Colfer - Artemis Fowl


I thought, since I read his adult fiction debut, it would be good to go back and take a look at the books that made Colfer famous. Artemis Fowl is a YA caper novel (in that Artemis is a thief, who steals things), with fairies. Not the nice kind. There are several books in the series, and Colfer clearly rode on the Harry Potter wave. That is to say, this was a series of YA novels that were a) inordinately popular and b) had this huge publicity thing driving each release. Lots of authors benefited from Ms. Rowling's success, which is the way it should work. Good for her, and good for them, and good for us!

Steve Turner - The Band that Played On


This is a book about the band on the Titanic. I think, actually, that more or less says it all. My dad is a huge Titanic buff (he's a naval engineer, so I think it's partly a professional thing), so I sort of grew up around Titanic stuff, but not much of it rubbed off. Anyway, this looks like an interesting way into the Titanic story. I hope it's better written than the last non-fiction I picked up.

*(left a dangling footnote there. Oops.) This is a perfect example of why supporting your local library is a fantastically good investment for local government. It's not just a big building full of books. Last year, our City Hall had some sort of renovation accident which resulted in toxic dust throughout the building. While they cleaned up, the City Council met in the library (we had to go through metal detectors to get into the library for a month - it was trippy.) The library is a meeting place for essential services at the city, state, and even the federal level (like FEMA).  It's a place to offer classes which help people develop job skills, or personal independence, or both. A couple of weeks ago, we acquired a kitten for my eldest daughter. We found the kitten through craigslist (which my spell check recognizes as a word, incidentally), and the provider of the kitten wanted a safe public place to meet to do the kitten delivery - we met at the library. All this AND a building full of books!

A Monday Plug

Hey, I have a post up at Slactiverse, on libraries and religion. You can read it here!

A Thing for your Friday Morning

Here is an excellent piece by Maria Shine Stewart on the importance of libraries and librarians. She starts out talking about college libraries, and ends up expanding it to encompass all public libraries.

A money quote:

as a little girl I would cut out construction paper pockets, glue them into books at home, and print as carefully as I could on them: “for reverance [sic] only – not to be taken from this room” … Any librarian still reading this far: Please: I meant that then, and I still do. I understand the pressures that you are under to cull collections and make space. But don’t purge too many books too quickly from the library. 

Toronto Library Update

I posted about the plight of Toronto libraries last week. Here's an update - since Margaret Atwood came out in favor of public libraries, several of the city councilors have announced that they will not vote to close libraries in Toronto. Yay!

More on Toronto Libraries

Here's an editorial from the Globe and Mail (which is considered by many to be the newspaper of record in Canada) which offers a vigorous defense of the Toronto Public Library system.

Review will follow.

Margaret Atwood rocks!

Actually, being a Canadian, I had to read a bunch of Atwood in high school, and she's ... not my favorite. However, in a recent exchange of views on the importance of libraries with a city councilor in Toronto, she totally rocks. Story here, online petition to save public libraries in Toronto here.

"Doug Ford (Ward 2, Etobicoke North) stood by his contention that some of Toronto’s 99 libraries should close, adding he would shutter one of the three in his Ward 2, Etobicoke North ward 'in a heartbeat.'

'All my point is, in my area at Rexdale and Kipling, there’s a library in an industrial area that is an industrial plaza and no one knows it’s there. But it’s there.

'Why do we need another little library in the middle of nowhere that no one uses? My constituents, it wouldn’t bother them because you have another library two miles one way and two miles the other way.'"

What? I mean, whaaat? Honestly, how do people like that get elected?

"his brother, Mayor Rob Ford"

Oh.

Friday Review, 7/22/2011

Before I review my two books this week, I would like to make an observation. Right now, in most of North America, it is damn hot. Damn hot varies, depending on where you are, but, here in Upstate New York, not a place known for being sweltering, it has topped 100 F (that's 38 C, for those of you in the civilized world), and that's damn hot.

Many people do not have the luxury of air conditioning when it is damn hot outside. Heating in the cold is far more common, and generally viewed as a human necessity, but air conditioning is a luxury. My family has decided that, since we only really need A/C two or three days a year, we aren't going to buy a window unit for the house, so I am part of that group of people who does not have A/C when it gets damn hot. One of the places people like me go (and take their kids to) when it gets damn hot is the library. Because it's free. Because it's full of books, and we like to encourage our children to read. And, obviously, because most libraries are air conditioned - it's good for the books if a fairly steady heat and humidity is maintained in the library. This is a good reason to support your local library - it provides a shelter from the heat for folks who don't have or can't afford air conditioning when it's damn hot.

Ok. Book reviews.

This week, I re-read a book which I've had on my shelf (or in a box somewhere) for at least ten years. It's an older book, but it's really good, and you've probably never heard of it.

Julie Czerneda - In the Company of Others


Ten years ago, give or take, my wife and I were running a small student convention in Virginia for the second year in a row. We had decided that we would invite authors that we were interested in listening to, since we could only really guarantee that the two of us would show up for the panels. In our hunting, we discovered Jule Czerneda. Her background intrigued us - she had hard science credentials, and everything about her books suggested that she took a very hard science approach to her science fiction. Also, she had co-authored a middle school curriculum which used short works of science fiction to teach students basics of science. So we invited her. And she was awesome; both as an author and as an author guest. If you are running a convention, I seriously recommend her, she's lovely.

In the Company of Others had been released fairly recently prior to the convention, and was, I believe, nominated for a Nebula award or a Hugo - I'm not sure. Either way, she chose to come to our convention rather than attend the award ceremony. Others was her fifth book, and her first stand alone novel - the previous four were parts one and two of two separate trilogies. It's a serious slab of a novel as well, and it realistically took me about a week to read - it's dense.

The plot. At some point in the distant future, humanity has terraformed several distant planets to relieve crowding on Earth. Before settlers can put down on the planets, however, it becomes apparent that something is seriously wrong - advance scouts die suddenly. The sudden death is traced back to the presence of Quill on the planets - a non-sentient creature which deep-space explorers like to keep as pets. Quill are ribbon like critters that bond somehow with a specific person and cause them to remain calm, or tranQuill, hence the name. The Quill bond with a specific genetic pattern - once bonded, they cannot be given away, except sometimes to a direct child of the owner. Prior to the terraforming, they were regarded as expensive (because difficult to get) novelties, but not dangerous. After the terraforming disaster, they become monsters.

Complicating the situation is the fact that Earth released settlers to orbiting way-stations before the planets were ready to receive them, and are now unwilling to accept the settlers back on Earth. This results in severely over crowded stations, and a great deal of hostility from the station dwellers towards Earth.

A generation has passed since the initial disaster. Our hero, Aaron Pardell, lives on one of the stations. As our book begins, a science vessel from Earth has arrived - the head of the mission, Dr. Gail Smith, is looking for Aaron. Aaron thinks he knows why - he has an odd medical condition. If people touch him, both he and the other person experience extreme pain, often to the point of unconsciousness. I think that's all I can say without offering spoilers.

Stuff I liked - the science is really hard here. Scientists engage in science, not technobabble.

- The people are real, too. They react in reasonable, and sometimes unreasonable, ways, and basically behave like real people. Czerneda presents characters in considerable depth, both as individuals and as a collective - secondary, tertiary, even unnamed characters in the book have personalities. This is clear - in the end of the book, Czerneda includes a cast of characters. There are names for people who do not even have "speaking" parts in the book - people who, in the movie credits, would be "third man from the left in the lab scene." Czerneda gives them names, and the care she takes there shines throughout the novel, which is one of the reasons it so dense.

- There's a really hot love scene in which neither participant touches the other at all, and no genitals are exposed. It's steamy, yet totally understated. One of my professors back in undergrad - actually, I don't know that I ever had him as a professor, come to think of it, but he was in the department - wrote fiction. At one event, he suggested that sex scenes in novels tended to be either vulgar or farcical, I believe the exact phrase was "like a banana on the front of a suit of armor". This love scene is neither, and it's brilliant.

- Julie Czerneda is a Canadian, and she peppers her works with little Canadian references. In this book, the space craft are often named for Canadian cities - the one that comes to mind is a freighter named Mississagua, which is a city outside of Toronto, Ontario.

Stuff I didn't like - it's long? And kinda dense? And I stayed up late last night finishing it.

Final thoughts - Julie Czerneda is a fantastic person and author, and her books need a much much wider audience. If you like really good science fiction, you totally owe it to yourself to check her out.

Alex Bledsoe - Dark Jenny


While I was at the library yesterday, I grabbed this one off the new book shelf. I do this thing at the library where I let the older kid run wild wander sedately through the kids' section seeking books for herself while I sit with the baby and read part of a book I've grabbed. Sometimes, I'll pick up a graphic novel and read it all the way through, and then not bring it home (unless I think my wife would like it, in which case I'll bring it home for her).* My eldest has picked up on this habit, and she will often read the books she is bringing home before she puts them in the library bag - so she often reads her books three and four times before they go back. She's totally my kid. :)

Anyway, Bledsoe is an interesting author. This is the third of the Eddie LaCrosse novels. Eddie LaCrosse is a "sword jockey" - a guy who you can hire to do some strong arm stuff, or to look into a messy mystery type situation - a sword for hire, if you will. In short, he is a hardboiled private eye - but in a narrative setting involving knights and dragons and magic and swords and such. This particular book blends an Arthurian milleu with the hard boiled PI trope - it's very much "you got your hard boiled PI in my Arthurian romance", "no, you got your Arthurian romance in my hard boiled PI."

Eddie is at the bar on a hard winter's night when someone shows up with a box for him. Not a box, a coffin. The coffin points Eddie to an old case involving Marcus Drake, king of Grand Bruan, and head of the Knights of the Double Tarn. (Marcus is, of course, the Arthur figure.) He recounts the tale to the rest of the bar patrons, and a sordid tale it is. The story features murder, treachery, and villainy. It also features beautiful women (who aren't what they seem), strong men (who aren't what they seem), knights in shining armor (who aren't what they seem) and useless over dressed nobles (who are exactly what they seem).

There is quite a bit of violence in the book, much of it brutal, little of it really graphic, but some of it a little disturbing. Some of the violence is directed at women. The hard boiled PI genre is not kind to women - women are either dangerous man-traps or virtuous damsels in distress (and much more often the former) - but Bledsoe softens that a little. His female characters have some depth to them, and reasonable motivations for what they do. Still, I think it would be safe to argue that there's some serious misogyny in this book, and the genre in general, so you have been warned.

Something that bugged me a little that has nothing whatsoever to do with the writing - the cover has this matte coating on it that makes it feel almost like it has been rubberized. It's really odd. I don't know if that's the original covering, or if the library added some sort of coating to protect the cover - I suspect the former, but I couldn't find a copy today at Barnes and Noble (they have air conditioning too!) to confirm. Anyway, it felt really weird in my hands - I got used to it as I read the book, but every time I pick it up, it strikes me again.

The short review - It's a quick read, it's very very smart, and it's good in lots of ways, and disturbing in some other ways. It's also rubbery for some reason.

*You know what that means (besides the fact that I forgot to include the footnote last night)? That means a) I still read comics (not that there's anything wrong with that) and b), I read more books than I tell you all about. I don't know if that makes me evil or benevolent.

Library Tuesday, 07/05/2011

First up, a reminder that the contest for the copy of Zombies vs. Unicorns ends at the end of this month.

The library was not open yesterday, as it was, of course, July 4th, and I currently live in the United States, where July 4th is a holiday. So we went today.

Two books today.

Neve Maslakovic - Regarding Ducks and Universes


Back in the '80s, a scientist did something which created an entirely separate universe, but in such a way that allows cross-universal travel. 35 years later, both sides of the divide have codified a series of laws governing such travel, largely to do with not messing around with the alternate universe, especially the life of any possible alternate versions of yourself. Felix Sayer, a struggling mystery novelist in San Francisco A, has recently discovered that he has an alternate version in San Francisco B, who might have already written the mystery novel that Felix A is struggling to write - and so, naturally, Felix A sets out to mess with Felix B. It looks like a delightfully complicated mix of alternate universes, near future sci-fi, and mystery novels. It's possible that it's too ambitious a concept - we shall see.

Hilari Bell - Trickster's Girl


This is the first book in The Raven Duet. I like Hilari Bell, I like tricksters (especially Raven and Coyote), and I mostly grabbed the book on that grounds. It seems to be a near future hi-tech setting with a boy who claims to be Raven, and claims to be attempting to bring magic back into the world to save us from ourselves. So, that could be good.

This evening, we attended the weekly summer library program. The summer reading program started this week, too - so we have all manner of sign up sheets and stuff to do in order to earn a free book and a ticket to see the Binghamton Mets - the NY Mets farm team. We do this every summer; often it's the only ball game we see all summer (because the B-Mets are, frankly, not that good). Your local library probably has something like this too - not with tickets to the B-Mets, because that would be odd - and you should totally check it out. We have a story teller coming in, and Irish dancers, and a juggler/pogo-stick performer - all manner of summer madness. And, sure, it's billed for the kids, but a good performer knows to play to the whole audience, so it's often a lot of fun even if you don't have kids to bring with you. Get out there, show support for your local library!

Library Activism

This arrived in my e-mail from the ALA (American Library Association). I don't know if I've mentioned it, but I'm Canadian. I live in the States, but I can't vote, and so I feel awkward calling senators and congresspeople who I did not, and will not in the future, vote for. But many of you are American citizens, so you CAN call your elected representatives. So.

"Please call both of your U.S. Senators at (202) 224-3121(That would be the Capitol Switchboard number) and ask them to sign onto this letter by close of business Wednesday, June 8.  Also ask library supporters to contact your senators as well.

Senators Jack Reed and Olympia Snowe are leading an effort to increase support for FY2012 federal funding for the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) and Improving Literacy Through School Libraries.  Tell your senators’ staffers to contact Elyse Wasch in Reed’s office or Matthew Hussey in Snowe’s office.  We need other senators to sign the Reed-Snowe letter as soon as possible.  Please call immediately.

It may help if you describe at least one valuable service that your library provides the community or a success story about a library patron.  Examples include access to computers and data services to aid job searchers, support for small businesses  with marketing data and other resources as well as teaching digital literacy to people of all ages including K-12 students."

Library Activism

Two things this week. First, a note that the Queens library system in New York City has announced that it stopped buying new books in December. Here's the story from the NY Daily News. I don't know that there's anything you can do about it, but consider - the Queens libraries typically buy 8,500 books a year. What does cutting that player out of the book buying market do to publishers? Especially as the trend spreads. Cutting library funding is stupid and short sighted.

Something that you CAN do - the community of Slave Lake*, in Alberta, Canada, was hit by a massive wildfire  early in May; the fire destroyed 40% of the town. (Here's the story from the CBC) Among the buildings burned was the local library. They are asking for donations - of money, certainly, but of books, new and very nearly new (nothing older than 2 years old) and in good condition. Here is a link to their website, with more information.

*Slave refers here to the Slavey nation, and not to slavery. Wikipedia explains it all, sort of.

More on the HarperCollin's e-book thing

Here's an article from LibraryJournal.com, here is another - a number of libraries and library systems have decided to boycott HarperCollins until they change their policy on e-books (26 views, then the library must purchase a whole new copy of the book). I'll be looking into this at my local library, which has just started offering e-book borrowing.

Here's some thoughts on the whole matter by Kate Sheehan (who's blog will be linked in my blog roll on the left) (eta - for some reason, I cannot add this blog to my roll, and so I have not).

Here is another well written post by another librarian (Sarah Houghton-Jan) proving once again that messing with deeply intelligent, well informed, highly verbal people (like authors and librarians) is a bad idea in the internet age. (Not that it was a great idea in the pre-internet age - deeply intelligent, well informed, and highly verbal people have always been good at making their ire known.) Here's another, which provides further details about this issue. Needless to say, Sarah's blog will be added to the blog roll, which is, as always, too the left.

Here is a lovely, and very short, explanation of the issue.

Here is a nice page to help you all keep track of the ongoing situation. 

Library activism on a Thursday

(This is totally copy and pasted from a Change.org mailer to me. None of the following are my words, although I endorse them fully. Andy's blog, referenced below, is here, and I am adding it to my blog roll, the the left.)

By day, Andy Woodworth is a mild-mannered librarian. By night, he's still a librarian, just less mild-mannered. 

Andy is kind of famous in the librarian community, mostly for getting the Old Spice guy to do a video about how great libraries are, and unsuccessfully campaigning to get Ben & Jerry's to create a flavor called the "Gooey Decimal System." (If you don't get the pun, just ask someone ten years older.)

Oh, and now he's using Change.org to help lead the charge in a fight against NewsCorp, one of the world's most powerful companies. 

See, more and more libraries are beginning to buy e-books, like those read on a Kindle or similar device. They're programmed to be like normal books -- lent out to one reader at a time, returned, and downloaded by another reader. It's simple, and especially great for working parents or the disabled who have a hard time making it to a library. 

But publishing giant HarperCollins (owned by NewsCorp) is trying to force libraries to only buy e-books that literally self-destruct after the 26th reader in an attempt to maximize profits. 

 Having to repeatedly buy the same book will be a financial and logistical disaster for libraries, one that could force a few to close their doors.

Even worse, there are signs that other publishing companies may soon follow the lead of HarperCollins, which could devastate libraries all around the world.  

Some amazing librarians have launched a full boycott of HarperCollins until the decision is reversed, but they urgently need widespread support to force NewsCorp to back down. 

Andy's petition demanding an end to self-destructing e-books has a goal of 100,000 signatures -- click here to add your name now:

http://www.change.org/petitions/tell-harpercollins-limited-checkouts-on-ebooks-is-wrong-for-libraries

Andy declares on his blog that "The world needs more badass librarians." It's true, though right now the world also needs more readers who will stand alongside them. 

Thanks for doing your part, 

Patrick and the Change.org team

More on Libraries in the UK

My visitor stats indicate that I have several readers in the UK, or at least one reader who checks the blog several times a week, so I don't feel entirely out of place posting information about libraries in the UK. Further, I remind readers in the US that libraries are similarly threatened here.

Marcus Moore, an author in Gloucestershire, discusses the frustrations involved in campaigning for libraries.

Phillip Pullman, the author of several very good YA novels, before there were YA novels, on the value of public libraries and why cutting them is stupid and short sighted. He says what I want to say with a higher level of eloquence than I could possibly muster.

Library Activism in the UK

From an NPR story yesterday: http://www.npr.org/2011/02/10/133656983/britain-faces-closing-the-book-on-libraries

Libraries play a vital role in communities all over; closing a library is like snuffing out one of the candles which keep the darkness of ignorance at bay. Closing libraries produces very short term benefits in terms of budgets, but result in long term and often irreversible losses - as John Dougherty, the last guy quoted in the article, says, "If you lay off your staff and sell off your library buildings, then when the good times come, you have nothing." Restarting a library is infinitely more difficult than closing it was, because you have to start from scratch; new building, new books, new staff - libraries grow slowly, so that each year's cost is so much smaller than the value of the institution.

This story is about libraries in the UK, but the same story is being repeated all over the United States as well, and it's not just libraries - it's parks, it's playgrounds, it's after school programs - in California, it's school programs like music and art and PE (these are paid for by the PTA, not the school - so if you are in a poor school district where the PTA can't gather the funds to pay for an art teacher or a PE teacher - the kids don't do PE or art. Sorry kids, you should have been smart enough to get born to rich people!)

Wil Wheaton on Librarians

As part of my (tenuous) on going campaign in favor of libraries (libraries are cool, and you should support your local library!), I give you a link to an article from Wil Wheaton's blog on librarians, and their awesomeness.