TwentySevenLetters / B

Odds and Ends

First, and most important: hie thee to GoodReads.com! Post your list (and reviews, if you like) of books you've read, are currently reading, or even plan to read. Look at what your friends are reading. Get recommendations for other books to read. It's MySpace for Readers. (I'm findable by name or by email.) Mostly my book-blogging will be over there, unless I have a review of something, or really need to snark.

I've confirmed two performers for the summer reading program--the annual henna programs and Rory Raven, coming back to give another talk on skepticism and the paranormal. Or something. He's a good person and very flexible; I've left the topic in his capable hands, as long as I can (however tangentially) relate it to the science theme. (And an update: yes, the teen program will be called Down to a Science.)

I have almost all of my non-outsider programs planned for the summer, and my brochure is just about finished. Just waiting now to get some images from the girl who draws all our summer art.

I've had a teen survey up on SurveyMonkey for a while now, and it's gotten a whole 19 responses so far. Responses have been pretty uniform: teens want movies and CDs added to the collection, and the fantasy, horror, and realistic fiction collections increased. They want more computers and comfortable seating. They don't like the cramped space they have now and the lack of more than 2 computers. There haven't been any real surprises, but that in itself is valuable knowledge.

The best book title weeded from the Children's Room thus far: A Boy and a Pig, But Mostly Horses. We've been refering to it as "a kid and some stuff that the book's not about," but really, it's hard to draw MORE humor out of this already-absurd title. This book deserves a special prize for the title alone.

Pi Day

I only realized a couple of days ago that I missed Pi Day last Wednesday, 3.14. I sighed sadly, having missed the opportunity to do something fun at the library for it. But then I figured, well, I can always do something during the summer reading program (theme: science!) for Pi Approximation Day, 22/7 (okay, so it's 7/22 for the Americans, but we'll fudge). But 22 July is a Sunday. I can't do a program then, either, because we're closed. And it'll be almost three years before I get another binary day--not until January 1 of 2010--01/01/10.

It is a sad calendar for geeky librarians, that's for sure.

Books: The Black Veil

I finished The Black Veil last night. Moody did manage to tie together his memoir with "The Minister's Black Veil," but ultimately it was because of a genealogy project--the Moody in the story being, according to family legend, one of Rick Moody's ancestors.

The memoir parts of the book were interesting, and I really enjoyed those sections. The criticism of the short story I have no intention to read, not so much. And really--is a stranger's genealogy interesting to anyone besides the person doing the researching?

I have his new book (The Diviners) on my To-Be-Read shelf, along with a review copy of an upcoming collection of novellas. I'm still looking forward to those, but I need to put a little bit of time between my Moody indulgences.

Renovations

The library was closed to the public yesterday for renovations. Lucky we were, too, because the 2-day installation stretched into a third day (yesterday) and it still isn’t done. The workers will be back on Monday to finish up, I think. And bring the remaining pieces of furniture, which for some reason aren’t here yet.

Despite all this, though, it’s pretty good. The new desks (reference and circulation) are far more comfortable than the old ones. It’s a hassle trying to find things (since one of the pieces that didn’t come is the drawer unit for the reference desk) and take phone calls (since the phones aren’t wired right, and the reference phone isn’t hooked up at all—the phone currently at the ref desk is the main phone into the library). It’s an adventure, to be sure.

The biggest issue I have with the renovation is that the new reference desk is where the old circulation desk used to be, so all day long I’ve been directing patrons to the new desk. Which they have to walk past to get to where I am. And then when I point to the GIANT BLOCK OF WOOD that’s literally eight feet away. And telling people that the return slots are at the end of the new desk, right there [pointing]. No, to your right. Your RIGHT. Turn around—on the RIGHT. That’s the new circulation desk. See the slot in the wall of it, down the end? Down the END. No, THIS is the reference desk. Right THERE [pointing] is where you can do your returns and check-outs. To your RIGHT. (For the curious: yes, that was all with ONE patron.) Several have continued to hand me their items. One complained “But that’s even further now!” (n.b.: the return bin is a good six feet closer to the door than it was.) This would all be hilarious if it weren’t so freakin’ annoying.

Reading: I flew through Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close last week. To all those who say it wasn’t any good, I say Bah, and You Don’t Know What You’re Talking About. It’s a 9/11 story, in a way—a 9-year-old boy (Oskar) on a quest for answers after his father dies in the World Trade Center. After finding a key labeled “Black” in his father’s belongings, Oskar tries to track down the owner (by visiting every person named Black in the New York City phone directory), in the hopes of understanding something more about his father. There’s a second story being told, about an old man who can’t speak, and the life he’s had since leaving Dresden after the World War II bombings. The stories come together beautifully, I have no idea why people are saying that this book just isn’t good. It’s sad, it’s touching, it’s intriguing, it’s funny. Is it as good as Everything is Illuminated? I have no idea, since I haven’t read that one yet, but it’s high on my list now.

Currently I’m reading Rick Moody’s memoir, The Black Veil. The memoir parts of it are interesting, and I’m enjoying them. The parts that are slowing me down considerably are the parts where he gets into criticisms of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Minister’s Black Veil.” Only as I look it up on Amazon do I find that the original subtitle wasn’t just “a memoir,” as it is on my copy, but “a memoir with digressions,” which I think is far more accurate. With 1/3 of the book behind me, I’ve finally realized that it’s okay to skim over the digressions.

(And as a little something more that made me laugh: when looking it up on Amazon, one of the results is for a downloadable study guide for Hawthorne’s story, the full title of which is “The Minister’s Black Veil: A Parable.” The study guide in question lists it as “a paradigm.” I don’t think this is quite the study guide to trust…)

Speaking of Hard Pan...

Holly’s Secret, by Nancy Garden. A seventh-grade girl has just moved to a new school and takes the opportunity to reinvent herself—including pretending she doesn’t have two moms. But how to keep up the charade? And both moms are hurt when Holly pretends one is just an aunt. It was good enough, I guess, but I’m having a really hard time reconciling this (frankly) kind of bland, weakly-written novel (published in 2000) with the wonderful Annie on My Mind from almost 20 years earlier. Annie had so much heart to it, with sharp writing that rang true to the ear. I honestly thought Holly’s Secret must’ve been published first—it has a lot of problems with rough, stilted dialogue and stereotyped characters (Understanding former Fat Girl, Follower, and Queen Bee), and the activities of seventh-graders in suburban/rural Massachusetts seems so hopelessly out of touch. But no, it’s just preachy and bland. It appeared on my weed list and I wasn’t sure about it, so I read it. Now that I’ve had some time to mull it over, I’m pitching it. I don’t have enough shelf space to keep Message books that aren’t even well-written.

Current YTD total of books: 32. This includes a number of graphic novels, but even so, that's more reading than I'd thought. Hooray! Current number of books left on the to-be-read shelf: 23. Yes, I did have it down to 18. This is something of a sickness.

Book review: The Higher Power of Lucky

The Higher Power of Lucky, by Susan Patron. I’m not sure what can be said about this that hasn’t already been said—it’s a good book, a very pretty book, somewhat atmospheric, in its way. But there’s not a lot of action. It’s another in the Newbery committee’s standards: a book with a strong character who has some internal conflict, but not a whole lot happens externally. In this particular case, I think it worked better than, say, Criss Cross, because THPOL really is about being in a town that’s perfectly happy with the status quo. The big conflict comes when 10-year-old Lucky finds evidence that her guardian, Brigitte—who came all the way from France to take care of her—wants to move back to her home country, probably without Lucky. The conflict is resolved in pretty much the way I’d expected, but it was still very sweet and comforting.

That’s the main word I think I’d use for it, actually—comforting. It’s a story of a girl who lives a quiet life, surrounded by people she loves and who loves her. Reading this book leaves you with the feeling that you’ve been sitting on the couch with a loved one—it’s not quite a hug, but still a very comfortable proximity, if that makes any sense. It wouldn’t have been my choice for the Newbery (I’ve ranted on this in earlier years; I find it very sad that books like Ramona stand no chance at all these days), but I can appreciate that they did finally choose a middle-grade book, instead of the teen-friendly novels they’ve been picking.

One quibble: the town of Hard Pan has a population of 43, and they’re pretty isolated from other towns. And yet there are enough people to support four ____ Anonymous groups? There’s apparently not much overlap between the groups, either, as Lucky’s job is to clean up between meetings, so the alcoholics don’t see the beer cans left by the gamblers, the smokers don’t see the butts from the alcoholics, and the overeaters don’t see the candy wrappers left by all the others.

Lastly, the kerfuffle over the word “scrotum” on the first page? Heaven forbid we should teach children the proper names for their body parts. There actually is one more occurrence of the “s-word” later on, when Lucky asks Brigitte what it is. And Brigitte doesn’t flip out on her: “‘It is a little sack of the man or the animal which has in it the sperm to make a baby,’ said Brigitte in her deep, quiet voice.” She does ask where Lucky heard the word, but it’s not treated as anything shameful or disgraceful. It's something that just is.

It’s the description of Brigitte’s voice that sums up this novel beautifully—it’s a deep, quiet story. And it’s one that I wasn’t sure I liked all that much, but the more I think about it, the more it grows on me. It’s that kind of book.

Book review: Can't Buy My Love

I finally finished reading Can’t Buy My Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel, by Jean Kilbourne. Overall, it was pretty interesting, though not what I’d expected. What I’d anticipated reading about, based on the title, was the psychological implications of advertising, and how advertisers use their knowledge of human nature and psychology to manipulate us into buying things. She did cover that a bit, but her focus was mainly on how women are portrayed and the glamorization of addictions. Still an interesting topic, but one I was less motivated to spend 300 pages on.

A little bit of research, though, turned up that this book was first published in 1999, under the title Deadly Persuasion: Why Women and Girls Must Fight the Addictive Power of Advertising. I think the original title was much more appropriate, because the book really is more of a WHY than a HOW. And while I thought I knew the basics of why advertising can be destructive, I’d never considered it in terms of addition—specifically, how cigarettes and alcohol are completely glamorized, how the ads imply that the products are more important than the people, how it normalizes things like drinking and smoking and makes them okay for kids—or anybody, really.

The book is organized into 13 themed chapters, only some of which I’d ever really thought about. It starts with fairly standard ideas—the commodification of people in general and teens in particular, the prevalence of advertising in virtually every context (including schools), and the self-image issues that girls face based on what they see in magazines and on television. But some of her other chapters touched on things I’d never really thought about, from relationship issues (showing couples in ads but the focus is on the product, or products being more satisfying than a mate could ever be, etc) to violence against women to the afore-mentioned normalizing of addictions.

So, overall: an interesting book and one I’d recommend—but know what you’re getting into. This book really is more about addictions (in her introduction, Kilbourne talks about her recovery from alcoholism and says that it does influence a lot of her work) and how advertisers exploit those dependencies than about how advertisers manipulate consumers through careful psychology, or how advertising influences culture.

Field trip!