Your vote counts!

At least when it comes to telling us if you like TeenVogue or not. Runelle signed up for a trial subscription just to see if it might be popular. We've got the September and October issues on the circulation desk counter, with a survey where you can record your heartfelt (or not) opinions. Or, leave your comments right here in blogspace.

Now's your chance!

The Straight Dope

Robin has just made a new display of weird reference-books-you-didn't-know-we-have. One of his choices was the third book of The Straight Dope series, by Cecil Adams (R031.02AD17r). Adams started literary life as a columnist for the Chicago Reader, a weekly alternative newspaper. Readers submitted questions on off-the-wall topics and Adams answered them, lacing his answers with sarcastic remarks and arcane facts. Here's an example of his style:

I have heard that McDonald's milkshakes contain seaweed. Can this be true?
"Absolutely. But the real shocker is that every McDonald's hamburger contains chopped-up pieces of - brace yourself - dead cow. So let's not get hung up on a little seaweed."

Adams goes on to explain that the milkshakes, along with a lot of other products, contain a thickener called carrageenan, which is a seaweed extract.

The guy seems to know everything. He's kind of an irritation to librarians, though, because he doesn't cite his sources. But he's hard to resist. Where else will you find out that aphids are born pregnant? Why a lieutenant general outranks a major general, while a major outranks a lieutenant? What cow tipping is all about?

Gross magazine covers

It's not fair. I'm a captive audience. Because I work in the library, I'm forced to look at the magazine covers on our New Magazine shelf until each issue is replaced by the new one. This is fine when it comes to visually innocuous titles like Sky and Telescope or (most of the time) any of the regular news magazines - Time, Newsweek, and their ilk. But then there are titles like Rolling Stone, which tends to feature either scantily clad women or hairy guys with tattoos. The worst, without doubt, is Mad, if only because the new issue only comes once a month. Here's what I have been enduring this month:



Thought I'd share the joy.

You are what you eat?

Or, perhaps the reverse. You Eat What You Are: People, Culture and Food Traditions by Thelma Barer-Stein (Q.394.12B237y1999 in the Reference collection) explores this profound question.

Take a look at this book to find out what gravlaks are, who quaffs pivo with their keufta, and how to prepare hwyaden hallt cymreig. Bon apetit!

To be anonymous, or not to be...

That is the question. I'm having a little internal struggle with myself over allowing anonymous comments on this blog. On the one hand, this is an "official" blog, school sponsored, in an environment where we all identify ourselves. We do this for the right reasons. By using our names, we have the courage of our convictions, we are standing behind what we say. On the other hand, I don't want to stifle dialogue. I'd like to remove barriers that might make it difficult to talk about sensitive content in books. Most of all, I hate the idea of forcing people to register with blogger.com just so they can make comments on this blog. I can avoid that by installing local blogging software, so people would only be registering locally. But I'm not sure I'm ready for the technology overhead that involves.

So what I'd like to try is to ask people who aren't registered with blogger.com to comment using the anonymous posting utility that's available, but to include your name at the bottom of your comment. Not your full name, but a name that identifies you to this community. And we'll see how it goes.

P.S. I can delete offensive comments, I know. But look what happened when I deleted the FIVE extra identical comments on the cockroach posting. It looks like I'm the Mad Censor of the Universe.

A new hidden gem in the graphic novel collection

Blankets by Craig Thompson
GN THO

This wonderful graphic novel, hidden within one of those ugly blue library covers, is by the same guy who wrote the plaintive Goodbye, Chunky Rice. It captures the pain and confusion of growing up, the hurts parents (wittingly or unwittingly) inflict on their kids, the hurts siblings and peers (wittingly or unwittingly) inflict on one another. The novel is also a complex portrayal of a rigidly fundamentalist Christian upbringing, of first love, and of the regrets and self-doubt that plague adolescence. The silences in this book are profound, the characters almost unbearably real.

A warning to the sensitive: some nudity, some really sad moments, and some - ahem - "mature" situations.

Mean girls

I haven't seen the movie, but I have read Margaret Drabble's novel Cat's Eye, which is an uncanny depiction of how long meanness lasts in a victim's head. This story about childhood friendship gone sour is told by a woman who spends much of her adult life working out the damage caused by those relationships. The girls' meanness is so skilled and subtle that the narrator is the one who always feels she is in the wrong.

Today I told a group of stressed-out freshmen that no one now cares how I did on a history test I took in ninth grade, not even me. But I can still feel the residue of conflicts I had with friends, the hurts we inflicted on each other. Which means those old friends of mine still feel those hurts too.

Documenting decrepitude

We (at Uni) are engaged in a little project of Documenting Decrepitude. All in hopes of convincing those in charge (or with deep pockets) that the building is worthy of extensive remodeling and refreshing. Herein are a few of the shots I took.

Library as tunnel:



Here's Robin, demonstrating the outmoded circulation desk:



Part of our attractive work area...



Thermostats that might go for big bucks on eBay:

Fan fiction (not) by famous authors

From the cover of Treks Not Taken, by Steven R. Boyett: "What if Stephen King, Anne Rice, Kurt Vonnegut, and other literary greats had written episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation?" Find this gem in the paperback collection, under Boyett.

Some choice chapter titles:

"The Crusher in the Rye"
Not by J.D. Salinger

"One Beamed onto the Cuckoo's Nest"
Not by Ken Kesey

"Jurassic Trek"
Not by Michael Crichton

"The Vampire Le Forge"
Not by Anne Rice

"The Trekking"
Not by Stephen King

"Trek of Darkness"
Not by Joseph Conrad

"Oh, the Treks You'll Take!"
Not by Dr. Seuss

Rave scene goes under cover

Literally. We have a fairly new book called This Is Not a Rave: In the Shadow of a Subculture, which has never been checked out. It was sent off to have its paper cover laminated and hard-bound, but came back with one of those ugly blue library bindings. So now it looks like it could just as easily be a tome on kidney disease or accounting. And it's not classified in either the music section or the dance section. Instead, its call number is 305.235M124t, which puts it alongside general books about youth and growing up.

The author wrote her masters thesis on rave culture and teaches dance, but she lets the ravers speak for themselves. So inside the boring-looking covers are hundreds of comments from teens who tell of their experiences. It's their voices that make this book hard to put down.

Deal with it

Mrs. Kovacs isn't the only one who has this book, you know. Our tattered copy of Deal With It (by Esther Drill, Heather McDonald, and Rebecca Odes, 305.235D832d) has the same advice about all things personal - from sexuality to zits, emotions, and self-destructive behaviors. Get the latest info at the accompanying website, gurl.com.

btw, this book is on the list of titles being challenged by the Library Patrons of Texas.

Ekiben: the art of the Japanese box lunch

Fast food elevated to a high art. Picture thousands of commuters rushing into train stations, stopping first at food kiosks to purchase perfectly arranged, stylistically and gastronomically unique ready-made meals. Here's the delicacy you can purchase at Tokaido Shinkansen Gifu Station:



Feast your eyes on these antidotes to McDonalds and Burger King.
Call number: 647.9552 K128e.

Oddballs

Some families are strange, and some families are really strange. In Oddballs (813 SL22o), William Sleator's autobiographical novel, one bizarre tale follows another. He starts with a bang on the first page by describing a game he and his sister played on car trips:

"We pretended we were BMs. We'd wrap ourselves up in an old brown blanket in the back of the station wagon and tell each other our life stories as excrement."

Sleator describes how his sister's stories portrayed the journey of digested food in the Buckingham Palace, while his generally involved the final form of tsimmes, a mean-and-carrot stew. Striped.

Not a bad way to start a book, in my opinion.