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Friday Fun! (Long Weekend, Job Hunt)
Hello my lovely readers! As ya’ll know, last weekend was a 3 day weekend for moi. I am pleased to report that I managed to hit up some Memorial Day weekend sales with my gal pals. The rest of the weekend was mostly devoted to being lazy, as it should be. I also had my first veggie burgers of the season. I know you can eat them year-round, but for some reason I prefer them when it’s warm out.
Since I’m acquiring my MLIS in January 2011, at my yearly review a couple of weeks ago I talked to my boss about my position. It was newly created when I was hired, so whether they wanted to keep it paraprofessional or make it professional was unclear. Well folks, they want to keep it paraprofessional. I’m welcome to stay, but also have their blessings to start looking for a professional position, which I’ve been doing. So I’m looking for my first professional job. You guys know how job hunting is; I don’t need to go into that. It has, however, been taking up a bit of time. If any of you guys happen to hear of anything or can put a good word in for me, I’d appreciate it. :-)
This weekend I’m looking forward to trying out a longer bike ride again to see if I’m getting any better. This undoubtedly will be combined with picnicking and reading. Happy weekends!
National Library Week 2010!
Today is the start of National Library Week here in the US–a week to honor and recognize libraries for all of the awesomeness that they entail. I thought I’d honor the week with a post about the important role libraries have played in my life. I hope you all will chime in and do the same!
My parents didn’t have much money when I was little, and on top of that, my mother homeschooled my brother and I. The bi-weekly trip to our local public library was completely an adventure. I couldn’t believe that all these stacks and stacks of books were available for me to read! Since we lived on a secluded road in backwoods Vermont, I didn’t get to see many other kids my age on a regular basis. My brother was 5 years older than me, and all the other kids on the road were boys a bit older than me at least, so books became my friends. When I was done with schoolwork, I’d run off to read. When books were done, the scenes and characters became the back-drop for my play. The only reason I was able to pursue reading so enthusiastically was because of the library.
When I reached high school, I was allowed to go to public school. The library became a safe place for me to go and explore all these new ideas and worlds I was being exposed to. Books that I took out from there and read led to me changing some very fundamental ideas I had held up until then. I would not be the person I am today without that experience. It was more than having access to the books. It was knowing that I could take them out and read them without judgment from the librarians or fear that they would run and tell somebody what I was reading.
In university the library became my work study place of employment. The library yet again was providing me access to books, both in the free form and in the money for textbooks form. I couldn’t get over the whole working environment. The librarians were, by and large, really cool! They were hip and sympathetic to my sometimes overwhelming life as a first generation college student. I was introduced to WorldCat and was amazed at my ability to hit the “Get It Now!” button and get nearly any item from other libraries in the US. (I’m sure the inter-library loan department wasn’t quite of fond of my love of the Get It Now button as I was, haha). The library was my go-to place to hang out with my friends, for quiet study, to work on a computer between classes (I didn’t have a laptop for most of college). Almost all of my friends from university are sorted under a Goldfarb Library tab on Facebook. It was yet again a safe place for me to live life and figure out what I think and who I am. Needless to say, it’s also where I figured out that I wanted to be a librarian, and is it any wonder when I see what impact librarians have had on my life?
When I look back over my life, it’s easy to see that I wouldn’t be the person I am today at all without libraries. I wouldn’t have been encouraged to explore, to make mistakes, to read new and sometimes crazy ideas (to make noise and surreptitiously have a slice of pizza with friends). I can’t imagine anything else that could fill that place in my life. For that reason, I am passionate about libraries in the 21st century. They are relevant, because what else can provide all of that to a growing, changing, exploring person? Libraries are a large part of what made me free to be me.
Guest Book Review: Chalice by Robin McKinley
Please give a warm welcome to my first guest book review participant, Chellie!
Meet the Guest!
My name is Michelle Oleson, and I’m currently the Web/Digital Services Librarian at an academic library. During a normal day, I coax printers into working properly, manage the library’s website content, help students find articles/books/staplers, and read a lot of blogs/tweetage. Outside work, I travel near and far, and enjoy keeping up my mediocre skills at playing flute, Latin, and online gaming.
Summary:
Robin McKinley’s short novel Chalice follows McKinley’s other novels on the Beauty and the Beast theme. Mirasol, a solitary twenty-something, bee-keeping enthusiast, finds herself out her depth as the newly appointed Chalice of her demesne (feudal styled village). The previous Master and Chalice both died under tragic and mysterious circumstances leaving the Willowlands demesne in both political and spiritual chaos. Mirasol must find a balance in her old and new life, in addition to solving the mystery of the Old Master and Chalice’s demise if she’s to successfully serve the new Master: an enigma in and of himself.
Review:
Much of this short novel is devoted to describing an overly complex feudal system with a Druid-esque relationship to land. The story itself could have been concluded inside of 30 pages.
Mirasol leads the narration and all of the movement within the story. While she represents a strong female character (like any Belle), she also lets herself be caught up in forces deemed beyond her control. Fans of Hermione Granger will love her proclivity to spend most days holed away in the library trying to teach herself all the laws and mysticism of being the Chalice.
Mirasol spends most of her internal dialogue puzzling over the new Master. Like any good feudal system, the old Master died leaving an elder son and a younger son. The elder son, being a spoiled brat drunk with power, sends his brother off never to be heard from again. Lucky for the demesne, the older brother manages to get himself killed before completely destroying his people. The leaders of the village have a tough choice to make: bring in an outsider to rule or try to restore the younger brother.
The younger brother has been living his life as a monk in service to Fire Elementals. He returns to lead his people as something of a Fire Element himself. His first act as Master is to burn Chalice/Mirasol to the bone by barely touching her.
Then nothing happens for a long time while Mirasol goes to the library, thinks about how awesome her bees and honey are, how neat being a Chalice is, and wouldn’t the new Master be just dreamy if he was anything at all resembling human. She has two or three conversations with the Master concerning how the land is holding up under all the strain of political upheaval. Neither of them thinks they’re doing a very good job, but hey, at least we’re not getting drunk and dying horribly in a fire…
At some point the higher ups of the realm decide having a Fire Elemental as Master of a demesne is a Bad Plan. These interlopers are only Bad Guys for the sake of moving the story forward. Mirasol, however, comes up with a pretty spectacular plan. The interlopers want to put their own guy on the throne and remove the current Master so he can go back to being a Fire Elemental. Mirasol is already showing signs of being completely smitten with the new Master and feels that the land/people couldn’t survive another change.
McKinley takes Mirasol on a tour of the village blessing every inch and corner of Willowlands with her cup o’ honey. Having successfully done this, she returns to watch the Fire Elemental Master duel it out with swords with the would-be Master. The new guy is obviously a puppet, and wouldn’t even be a threat if the current Master was more corporeal. Cue Fairy Tale Ending: Mirasol has her awesome bees attack the interloper in the middle of the duel. Somehow this is not seen as cheating. All of her bees die; it’s very sad. But from the bodies of thousands of bees, arises the Master returned in the flesh of his enemy. The fallen man lies on the ground burnt to a crisp.
Quick resolution: Mirasol and the Master wed, as it’s obviously the only sensical thing to do.
I loved the fairy tale elements of this story. I think the world could have been more simply explained, but maybe it’s just McKinley’s style to announce something significant, spend pages explicating the history of these circumstances, to return to the conversation once you’re ready to scream Get On With the Story Already.
I’m looking forward to reading McKinley’s Sunshine book, as I’ve heard it’s highly recommended. I would recommend Chalice to fans of overly complex high fantasy, such as Marion Zimmer Bradley’s books.
3 out of 5 stars
Source:
This book was a gift.
Friday Fun! (Tiffany, Wii, and Websites at Work, Oh My!)
Even though this week was spring break from grad school, I still had to work full time and of course managed to be super-busy outside of work as well.
My friend Tiffany from my days of interning with Americorps/the National Park Service has been in town for training for her job. She lives in Virginia, so this was pretty darn exciting. This was her last week in Boston, so she came over to my apartment so we could visit in relative quiet as opposed to the noise of a restaurant or pub. It was so lovely to get to catch up after all this time, and I was glad to discover that in a relatively short time we were chit-chatting just like we did when we lived and worked together at the park.
This week I discovered that having the tax return money to buy a Wii and tv is one thing, finding places that have them in stock is another entirely. I won’t even go into the debacle that was the store brand tv purchased at Best Buy (needless to say, it was returned), but I will say what the hell, Nintendo? You have an insanely popular gaming system, and you’re not meeting demand? That just doesn’t make sense to me. After much searching, genius finally struck me in the form of Walmart.com, which had a few consoles in stock. Huzzah! It arrived on Wednesday, and I’m enjoying it just as much as I thought I would. My tv arrived from Walmart.com yesterday, but I have yet to set it up. Fingers crossed that we’ll be able to make Netflix stream on it!
Work has also been very busy as this is the time of year when I update our website. Long story short, with hospital privacy concerns, one person has control of all of the websites connected to the hospital, which means we get to update our websites once a year and that we have zero to very very little control over the appearance. This is frustrating to me as it limits what I can do. (For instance, I’ve been having to use tables. TABLES). Since we can only update once a year, that also means a bunch of our links are broken by the time that comes around, so I spend a lot of time hunting down the good ones. Thankfully, this will soon be in the past as the hospital is organizing an intranet, which means I will get to be webmaster of our websites! (And the nurses’ websites, which I’m actually a bit nervous about). So as soon as I finish this update to tide our patrons over until the intranet, I’ll commence working on the intranet. You guys, I’m nervous, this will be the first time I’ll be using my real web programming skills for work. Eep. *crosses fingers*
I’m excited for the weekend! Be expecting more reviews of old and obscure books as the Audiobooks app is a good companion to web design. Happy weekends!
The Electronic vs. Print Books Debate
The eBook debate has been fairly consistently humming in my virtual world –twitter, GoogleReader, listserves, etc… Frankly I’m starting to wonder at the vitriol being spewed by both sides of the debate.
We have the print people who are absolutely certain that the electronic people are out to kill any and all print books leading to some sort of Big Brother society where The Man can delete our censor our books whenever he sees fit.
Then we have the electronic people who firmly believe print books are horrible for the environment and anyone who wants to still read them is a backwards, ancient person trying to hold society back.
Um, people, what planet are you living on?
I really believe the eBook vs. print book situation, if allowed to naturally play out, will lead to a world where print and electronic books coexist gracefully. A world where some people will still prefer print books in most cases but electronic books in others, and other people will prefer electronic books in some cases but print books in others. Consumers as a group are actually far more flexible than anyone is giving them credit for. Sure, there’ll be the die-hard hold-outs who will refuse to read anything not in print, and there will be the obsessive electronic fans who will refuse to read anything not on a screen, but in between these two extremes are everybody else. From what I have seen, people choose which option is best for the situation. Most people I know have a few books in each format, depending on what they need them for. Consumers aren’t busy spewing vitriol at each other. They’re busy saying “Well, I want this genre book on my iTouch for my commute, and this nonfiction book in print so I can write my thoughts in it as I go reading it in the evening.”
The reason for all the angry commentary is plain and simple: fear. People are afraid of change. Booksellers are afraid their stores will become obsolete or at least not profitable anymore if people are downloading their books. Electronic vendors are afraid the print folks will shout them down before they ever even get a chance. Then there’s the snobs who think their way is always the best way and are afraid of anything else.
Well, you know what? I doubt either scenario will happen. I see a future where booksellers have print books and stations where people can download new electronic books to their reader, and possibly even charge their reader for a small fee. I see a future where people still have a bookshelf of beloved print books, but also a charging station for their eReader. I see a future (hell, I’m already living this) where morning commutes feature people reading on eReaders and reading print books they own and reading library books and listening to audiobooks.
So, really, people, calm down and just let the change happen. It’s not going to kill anyone or anything.
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