Booking Through Thursday (10 December)

Today's Booking Through Thursday: "What items have you ever used as a bookmark? What is the most unusual item you’ve ever used or seen used?"

Oh, bookmarks. I love bookmarks. I think they are lovely. But it seems that every time I use a "real" bookmark, especially one that someone has given me or one that has special meaning, it manages to fall out of my book and I lose it forever! So even though I still love getting bookmarks and have a good collection of them, I won't use them if I plan to take the book out of my house (which I do for almost every book I read).

So instead I use... anything that's handy. Restaurant menus, receipts, envelopes, bills, checks (that I need to deposit!)... anything that is the right size to fit in the book I'm reading. I don't know about "unusual items", but I'd have to say that the oddest things I've ever put in my book were my and Scott's plane tickets to Florida in July, and that's because of the reason I put them there. See... I figured that I would keep better track of my library book than the very expensive pieces of paper I was using as a bookmark. This is my life. :)

The Reptile Room, by Lemony Snicket (4 December — 7 December)

Oh, audiobooks. Scott and I listened to about 2/3 of this book driving from Pittsburgh to Cleveland on Friday, but then we totally neglected it until yesterday. And then, when I was playing it on my computer and had lots of distractions? Terrible! I had to fold laundry just so I could focus on the book. Moral of this story? Save the audiobooks for the car. :)

But anyway, this is the second in the Series of Unfortunate Events, which I am apparently very slowly catching Scott up on. (Is there a rule about ending sentences with two prepositions?) Violet, Klaus, and Sunny, having recently avoided Violet's marriage to Count Olaf, get to go live with their herpetologist uncle, Montgomery Montgomery, and his large collection of snakes. Uncle Monty is everything that Olaf is not, and the orphans have a lovely time for the few days until Monty's new assistant, "Stephano" (really Count Olaf) shows up. Unfortunate things then happen to the kids, as you may have guessed.

This audiobook was a lot different than the one for The Bad Beginning; instead of different actors for all the voices, Tim Curry took on all of them, which made the tone rather a bit darker than in the first book. Curry also employed a hacking cough every time he spoke as Poe, which is correct, I suppose, but incredibly annoying (especially to Scott). It was still delightful, however, and I highly recommend again the series and the audiobooks.

Rating: 7/10

See also:
[your link here]

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

Should you become a librarian?

Not if you believe this. This makes me a little sad. But a little more mad.

Firstly, and most obviously, because I am in library school. I'm certainly qualified to do other things, I like respect, and my cat has a historical cat name — crap. I guess I should just quit now, right?

That's the secondly: Seriously? Seriously? Because I want respect as a librarian (this seems to be the overarching theme of the flowchart), I can't be a librarian? So we're going to leave the profession to people that don't want respect anyway? This seems a little bit off to me.

Some of the commenters on the post find this flowchart funny, and maybe that's its intent. Because while I'm sure that public librarians, especially, find themselves feeling like overpaid babysitters at times, I'm also sure that there are times that make those librarians say, "This is why I became a librarian." Because otherwise, why would they still be going to work every day? But to have this flowchart out there, where non-librarians and potential librarians can see it (potentially) taken out of context... that's going to drive away some really great future librarians.

Other commenters note that librarians are going out of style, that they're being replaced by paraprofessionals, that soon enough everything is going to be automated so why should anyone enter library school right now? To that I say, because library science and information science are changing, too. MLIS students don't just learn how to shelve books. They learn how to use new information tools and how to teach others to use them. They learn how to put together and maintain digital libraries. They learn how to be a librarian of the future, not of the past that these commenters seem to be living in.

If your boss doesn't respect you, and especially if you don't respect your boss, figure out why not. If it's a personality clash; find a new boss. Get out of there. If you're doing something wrong, make it right. If your boss is doing something wrong, make it right. Take initiative.

If the customers are fighting you, and you are doing your best to help, you need to find a new way to help. Ask more questions. Put yourself in the customer's shoes. Don't be confrontational. Make the customer happy, even if you can't answer the question.

If your coworkers despise you, you are probably doing something wrong. Fix it. Or possibly you are doing everything right. Fix them, but be respectful about it.

If your mother cries and begs you to join a religious cult, your mother is crazy. Get her professional help. (Okay, this one's obviously meant to be humorous. But just in case.)

I agree with one (sadly anonymous) comment: "Instead of whining about being a librarian, go be something else." If you don't, there's a chance you'll soon become the disrespectful boss or co-worker that ruins things for everyone else. There are plenty of excited young students (I am one of them) who want to change your profession for the better. Let us do it.

Google vs. the Dewey Decimal System

The other day I found myself a bit confused by a question from a relative: "Do we even need the Dewey Decimal system anymore, now that we have Google?" Her question was mainly based on not knowing what Dewey Decimal is at all, but might it be a valid question?

Well, let's look at this. Google is, as I'm sure everyone who can read this knows, a search engine. If you're looking for, say, information on whether you get more wet by running or walking in the rain (this is an example given to me by the aforementioned questioner), you can use Google to find the answer, or at least potential answers on a variety of websites.

The Dewey Decimal Classification system, on the other hand (and along with its friend the Library of Congress Classification system, among others), is an organizational tool. It says that if you are looking for, say, an item about whether you get more wet by running or walking in the rain, you can find it on the shelf in probably the 530s (that's the lovely physics section) or so. But the trick is that sure, you can find books on physics in the 530s, but you might find the answer to this particular question somewhere else entirely. Like in the 613s in a book on health... I suppose you'd want the best way to avoid a cold, after all. You're really better off finding the book you want via the catalog (or Google, as I did here) and then heading for the shelf with decimal in hand.

So you cannot use Dewey directly to find an answer; that's what the books are for (which you can locate in your library using Dewey). You cannot use Google to find a book on a shelf (unless, of course, it gives you a call number), though you could use it to find a digitized book pretty quickly.

And that's another thing. Now that Google is digitizing books like a madsearchengine, I can see why Dewey and other classification schemes would be falling out of style. Who needs a call number for something intangible? But even with this mass move to the Web, libraries are still housing books that need to be organized. And even on the Web, people are interested in finding items that are related to the ones they are looking at now.

Why else would we have social bookmarking sites or an online encyclopedia that has at least a few good articles or even Google image search? Clearly, information wants to be organized (or at least we silly humans like it that way). Is there really a difference between using Dewey to sort books into categories like Technology and History and using tags to sort blog posts by the celebrities they mention?

No. Not really. So maybe Dewey and his decimals aren't going to prevail in the world of digitized books, where books can be "shelved" next to any other book that shares a tag (and really, that is a much nicer system to use!), conflicting topics be damned. But the concept behind Dewey, that of being able to sort and organize information, of being able to figure out which darn Google link is going to give you the answer you want... that's definitely going to stick around.

Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie, by David Lubar (2 December — 3 December)

I would never have picked this book up except that it was on my Back to School Challenge list, but I am really glad I did! Super cute.

Scott Hudson is a new freshman at a slightly stereotypical high school — the upperclassmen are bullies and lunch money thieves, the gym teacher is brutal, the Spanish teacher doesn't speak English. That's fine, because Scott is a pretty actual-typical guy. He's moderately into sports, he has a few close guy friends, and he loves to read lots of wonderful books. I like him already! The story follows Scott's escapades through freshman year, starting with a failed attempt or two or three at getting close to his crush, Julia, and also includes some diary entries written to Scott's unborn new sibling, Smelly (not its real name), on how to survive high school.

While it's true that Scott gets into a few more weird situations during his first year in high school than most people get into in four years, I liked that he kept a level head about all of them and dealt with them in a very adult manner. A few times that he acts like an idiot about things, but he figures that out pretty quickly. This is the kind of book I might get for my little brother in the future to keep him from getting in trouble. :)

And, of course, the best part of the book is all the English stuff! Scott's got a very "O Captain, my Captain" English teacher who is awesome and whom Scott also enjoys, so Scott gets into writing newspaper articles in various styles, from Tom Swifties to a diary entry, and Lubar works a lot of book references and name-dropping (The Princess Bride, anyone?) into the story.

I feel like this is one of those books that even people that don't like to read would get into as well, which is probably why it's on my high school's 9th-grade reading list. Perhaps we should experiment on a few non-readers... anyone know a fourteen-year-old with too much time on his hands?

Rating: 8/10
(Back to School Challenge, Countdown Challenge: 2005)

See also:
[your link here]

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

Lord of the Flies, by William Golding (24 November — 1 December)

This book would have been better with cannibalism.

No, seriously. I was promised cannibalism, and there was none. Hinted potential cannibalism? Yes. Actual eating of humans? No. Totally unfair.

For this review I'm going to assume that a) you are unlike me and actually had to read this at some point in your schooling or b) you are like me and the book was spoiled for you by a person of the A persuasion. If neither of these are true, well, now you know there's no cannibalism?

Tiny plot summary: a bunch of boys get stranded on a jungle island after some mysterious circumstances. They start off working toward rescue, but then some kids break off to have fun on the island or hunt the native pigs. The latter group gets bigger, the former group gets smaller. The hunters get all worked up in a tizzy one night and kill one of the other boys, who they thought was a beast at the time. Oops. Then they get worked up in a bigger tizzy about wanting to run the island and they on-purpose kill the fat kid with the asthma. Mmmm, dashed brains (and still no cannibalism!). Then. Then. -twitch- Then, right before they kill (and possibly eat? Cannibalism, please!) the last of the relatively sane people, they get frickin' rescued. WHAT.

I mean, yeah, the book is old and British, and the writing is difficult to understand at times, and there is NO CANNIBALISM, but I was pretty much on board with the book the whole way through. I was intrigued by the slow descent into madness (well, faster for some) of the boys, especially the one who's trying to keep everything together. I was horrified but admiring of the sow "rape" scene (no, there is no sex with pigs. Or cannibalism). But then, right when we're about to find out just how deep into evil 12-year-olds can get... they get frickin' rescued. Jeez. The one time they keep the fire lit. Especially after all of the stuff in the beginning about how maybe there was an atomic bomb and probably everyone else is dead and all, the rescue really seemed completely out of place. I get it — the kids are all crazy and stuff until a real voice of authority comes, at which point they become good little Brits again. But I think the drama, the horror, and the irony would have been just that much more delicious if Golding had at least waited until AFTER Ralph was dead for the rescuers to come. Seriously.

The other problem I had with this book is that while I liked specific scenes (the "rape", Simon talking with the Lord of the Flies, the parachutist/Beast nodding in the breeze, any time Ralph says "sucks to your ass-mar"), I had a lot of trouble remembering any character that wasn't on a page for a while. Jack, Ralph, Piggy, sure. But everyone else I had to flip back and re-learn who they were all the time. I don't know if that was Golding's intention (kids are interchangeable?), but it was really rather confusing.

But I did actually like this book, possibly because I didn't have to read it for school. :) Funny how that works.

Rating: 7/10
(My Year of Reading Dangerously)

See also:
Rhinoa's Ramblings

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

Invisible I, by Stella Lennon (30 November)

One (the only?) good thing about Scott getting sick on vacation is that I got to spend yesterday finishing up some homework and reading! Yay, reading. I hope he's not still deathly ill today, but I did bring a lot of books with me....

Right. Anyway. The book I decided to curl up with yesterday is called Invisible I, and I had not heard of this book before I saw its bright pink cover on the YA shelves at my local library. As you might know, I am attracted to shiny things and things in neon colors, so clearly this book was for me! The inside cover sounded cool, too, talking about a high schooler disappearing and her only friend(s) (more on that in a second) having to go out looking for her. There is also an interactive website for the book, where apparently people can go to pretend to be Amanda's friends and potentially change the outcome of the series. I declare that pretty cool.

The plot! Our protagonist, Callie Leary, is called into the vice principal's office one day, and though she thinks it might be news about her disappeared mother, it's not. No, instead, Callie's friend Amanda has cut school and played a prank, which is not unusual except that this time Amanda has implicated Callie in the crime. Oh, and these two other people that Callie once associated with before she became an I-Girl (read: Heather [read: Mean Girl, if you're a young'un]), but whom she'd rather not be seen with anywhere, let alone the vice principal's office. The veep wants info on where Amanda went, but the three kids just don't know... until they start getting clues from Amanda, who has apparently not run too far away and who apparently has plans to make Callie, Hal, and Nia BFFs for life. The search begins!

It's a fun book. I remarked on the Twitters yesterday that it reminds me of Paper Towns, Mean Girls, and Veronica Mars rolled into one — Paper Towns for the friend what runs away and leaves clues behind, Mean Girls for the clique aspect and the "let's wear green on Saturday" note (though there are some things that make a couple of I-Girls more Heathers than Mean Girls), and Veronica Mars for the disappeared mother and the multi-layered mysteries that it seems our intrepid heros will be solving. This is a good combination, but it does make the plotting a little choppy as the author jumps around.

Speaking of the author, I guess I should have added The 39 Clues to yesterday's list, because a) there's a different author for every book (though in this case there's a pen name for the series) and b) it's all interactive and stuff and some clues show up on the aforementioned website. Now I'm wondering what a collectible card game for The Amanda Project would look like. I am intrigued.

Rating: 8/10
(Countdown Challenge: 2009)

See also:
[your link here]

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.