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Books I've Read More Than Once

I once did a post on authors whose books I've read more than one of as a way to assess who my favourite authors are. After re-reading “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy, I realised I could do something similar by listing the books that I've read more than once.  This is an incomplete list, just going from memory and ones that jump to mind.  One interesting finding – although I probably read 90% non-fiction these days, it's 90% fiction that I go back to more than once.

“Charlotte's Web” – EB White
“Fight Club” – Chuck Palahniuk
“Phantom: Story of His Life” – Susan Kaye
“Skipped Parts” – Tim Sandlin
“Slaughterhouse Five” – Kurt Vonnegut
“Stuck in Neutral” – Terry Trueman
“The Cay” – Theodore Taylor
“The Diary of Anne Frank” – Anne Frank
“The Road” – Cormac McCarthy
“Time's Arrow” – Martin Amis

Posted 06 November 2008 § Main Page § PopCulture ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged:

Obama Front Pages From Around The World – What History Looks Like

He won.  And history looks like this…
Posted 05 November 2008 § Main Page § Politics § United States ‡ Comments (0) °

Liveblogging The Election

Well, CNN has inspired me to start a live blog which I'll update as the night goes on…feel free to hit REFRESH if you want to hear my deep thoughts as the night progresses…

6:17pm
CNN has unveiled HOLOGRAMS into their coverage.  Jessica Yellin has just appeared in the studio like some weird Princess Leia!  (Oh God, she just made that analogy herself!)  But as Shea pointed out, “how comes the US has the technology to do holograms but not voting machines?”)

6:22pm
So weird to watch TV and not be inundated with campaign commercials.

6:28pm
My out-there prediction.  Obama will take North Dakota, my neighbour to the south.

6:31pm
Did they just show a checkmark by Obama's name in Vermont with NO polls reporting?

6:47pm
Wrestled the laptop back from Shea who's on her way to her first yoga class.  So it's Pace and Daddy watching the election for the first part of the evening.  (We've taught Pace to say Obama but it sounds like “Bubba”. We also taught him to say “McCain” but it sounds like “loser”.)

6:53pm
Wildest rumours of the election:
1) by far, that Obama euthanized his grandma the day before the election to maximize the impact of the announcement and thwart any last minute GOP attacks. 

Other insane ones include:
2)  the GOP is throwing the election on purpose so that they'll come back strong in 2012 when Obama is unable to clean up the shitstorm they left behind. 
3) Palin is purposely undercutting McCain so she can run in 2012 (okay, that's not so far fetched.)

7:06pm
Related to a couple of those last rumours – why would ANY Republican want to follow GW Bush?  And I guess, why would any Democrat?

7:20pm
And did I mention that I much prefer the US practice of broadcasting results as they come in rather than the Canadian style of having staggered poll closing times so that all polls come in at (roughly) the same time.  If you're going to change your vote or not vote at the last minute because of what's happened on the east coast, you probably don't deserve to vote anyhow!

7:38pm
Liveblogging may end prematurely.  Pace just fell asleep on my lap and I think tonight I'd rather cuddle with him than move him.  Completely unrelated to the election, I just started re-reading “The Road” – god, what a great book!

Posted 05 November 2008 § Main Page § Politics § United States ‡ Comments (0) °

Today's The Big Day!

Yep, Pace had his first visit to his day care in Regina today – monumental!

Just kidding.  Obviously, the only story today is that, after months and months of electioneering, there will be a new US President.  And at the risk of jinxing it, the most respected polling aggregator is predicting a 99% chance of an Obama victory.

It's been a captivating campaign.  The first mention of Barack Obama on this blog was eleven months ago – at a point where the leading contenders for the Republican nomination were Rudy Guiliani and Mitt Romney and John McCain had been written off.  The leading contenders for the for the Democratic nomination were Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama but Obama was still seen as a definite underdog at that point against the Clinton machine. 

But, other than the small details that he's half-black and has Muslim roots (including the middle name “Hussein”), you probably couldn't create a better candidate for the US election than Barack Obama – worldly, intelligent, ground-breaking – both in his personal life (first black editor of the Harvard Law Review) and his use of technology, eloquent, compassionate, youthful, handsome.  But even the “negatives” about his blackness and his Muslim roots may have helped him in a weird way.  Some have speculated that there may be a rebound effect after eight years of the definition of a homogenous “good old boy”, George W. Bush (or at least that's what he plays on TV) with people trying to pick somebody as far from what George W. Bush represents as possible.  A related point – some have wondered if there's a Huxtable effect – where notable changes in society are often presaged by a sea change in pop culture twenty years earlier.  

Also of great interest to me personally is the massive role the Internet played in this election in everything from blog-based attacks to viral YouTube videos to fundraising records being set to mobilizing voters across the nation.

Ultimately, what it comes down to is the fact that, in a few hours, the United States will likely have its very first black President.  And if I'm honest with myself, that's something I wasn't sure I'd ever live to see.  The odds seemed so great against it, the racism in the US too deep.  Instead, it's not just in my youngish lifetime that I'll get to see it.  But even more amazingly, folks like Charles will too…

(have your hankies ready if you watch this video):

It's a bit of hyperbole but if there was any single thing the US could do to restore its position in the world in one fell swoop, the election of Barack Obama could do that.  Enjoy the evening! 

 

Posted 04 November 2008 § Main Page § Politics § United States § Video ‡ Comments (0) °

Music Monday – "Now I'm Singing in the library/And trying to flirt"

Thanks to Cenobyte for passing this along – not only a great video set in a library but someone out there is redoing the lyrics of various videos so they match what is shown in the video!  This one is the classic Tears for Fears track “Head Over Heels” but you should look at the “Related Videos” section of the page for more examples.  The “Rick Roll” one is particularly funny!

Posted 03 November 2008 § Main Page § MusicMonday § Video ‡ Comments (0) °

Playing with Pace in the Backyard

Posted 02 November 2008 § Main Page § Pace § Photo ‡ Comments (0) °

Pace at Halloween

Posted 02 November 2008 § Main Page § Pace § Photo ‡ Comments (2) °

Friday Fun Link – A Conceptual Costume for Halloween (Oct 31, 2008)

For the past couple weeks, I was planning to go to work as a hockey player for Halloween.  Then, after I got home from hockey last night (two of our six goals thank-you very much.  Of course the other team got 20 goals so not so impressive from a team point of view), I lay in bed thinking “that's a pretty generic idea – why can't I think of something unique and preferably connected to my job?” 

One thought led to another and around 2am, I came up with the idea of taking a plain white t-shirt, a bunch of coloured markers and going as a “Human Flip Chart”. 

Why that for a costume?  Well, over the past couple months, I've been introduced to all RPL staff via a series of “Dealing With Change” workshops that I sat in on (yes, all 10 of them!)  One of the main exercises at the workshops was a visioning exercise where people were placed in groups and had to either come up with some ideas about “Where RPL Is Now” or “Where RPL Will Be In The Future”. 

So I thought it might be fun to do a take-off on that but instead of asking a “work” question, I'd ask people to write either their favourite book or author on the “human flip chart”.  I wasn't sure if the idea would work but it turned out to be quite a hit – I had one person come by my office just to make sure they got to record their favourite book, another person said it was such a good idea she was going to steal it for a Halloween party she was going to later tonight and one co-worker wrote down a few of the titles she hadn't heard of, assuming that if somebody claimed it as their favourite, it was probably worth checking out.  (Talk about a unique form of reader's advisory!) 

And what were the books/authors chosen as favourites by random staff I encountered at RPL's Central Branch throughout the day?

The Godfather by Mario Puzo
Oscar Wilde
The Little Engine That Could – Watty Piper
James Patterson
Green Eggs and Ham
Fall on Your Knees by Anne Marie MacDonald
Lord of the Rings by Tolkien
Bel Canto – Ann Practchett
A Wrinkle in Time
Stone Age to Golden Age – Mr. Gordon Meek
Outlanders – D. Gabaldon
Sex and the City (this person freely admitted they didn't know if the TV/Movie had a related book but just wanted to write the word “sex” on me somewhere)
Stranger in a Strange Land
Emma by Jane Austen
Speechless – Rosemary Crossley
Captain Underpants
The Secret
Paddy Clark Ha Ha – Roddy Doyle
Gail Bowen
Night – Elie Wiesel
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
The Stud (not sure if this was a book or a message!)
The Power of One – Bryce Courtney
Julie Garwood
The Tower Treasure – FW Dixon
Black Cat – Poe
Charlotte's Web
Catch A Fire
Charlotte's Web (it, along with “Gone With the Wind” were the only two chosen twice I think)
Cloister Walk – Kathleen Norris
Joan Johnston
Grapes of Wrath – Steinbeck
Lillian Harry – British War Fiction

(I may have missed some – it's remarkably hard to read a shirt with writing all over it in a logical manner!) 

…and here's what it looked like at the end of the day:

 

Posted 01 November 2008 § Library § Main Page § Photo § PopCulture ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged:

A Celebrity Filled Day (Yes, In Regina)

Went over to the downtown mall for lunch today as I forgot my customary lunch o' leftovers.  It was packed in the food court so I ended up sharing a table with a guy who turned out to be the guitarist from a band who were a bit of a one-hit wonder in the early 2000's.  (They did end up getting a song on the 90210 soundtrack so you can't do much better than that!)  To hear their big tune, click on this link then select “Rock” then “May B Ted – Wet”. 

Then, at Beer Bros Pub for “Books to Beers” after work, who's sitting at the bar but Corner Gas's  Officer Davis?  (I was there before everyone else arrived but was still too chicken to go up and thank him for being the poster boy for Sask Library Week last year.) 

And to top it off, the waitress mentions that she recently worked on the set of Stephen King's “Dolan's Cadillac” which was shot in Regina earlier this year.  Christian Slater was the star and when I look up the film when I get home, it turns out it was directed by a guy I went to University with (which means I have a Kevin Bacon number of 3!)

Anyhow, life sure is exciting in the big city!

Posted 31 October 2008 § Main Page § PopCulture § Saskatchewan ‡ Comments (2) ° Tagged: ,

"Barry's Infomercial"

In addition to going to my usual sources to read responses to the Barack Obama half-hour, less than a week to go “infomercial”, I went to a fairly popular right-wing blog called Little Green Footballs to see what kind of response the speech got there. 

Just like my conversation with the library technician from the Regina Christian School at the Teen Literacy Forum on Monday, it's always interesting to get some insight into people who have diametrically opposed views to your own.  (Sample quote from the RCS Librarian: “We have certain…restrictions…on what we can buy.  But as long as a story shows good triumphing over evil, we'll consider it for our library.  That's our main criteria…good over evil.”  She also said something about the main goal of school being to promote conformity or something.  So there were some things we agreed on!  )

Posted 30 October 2008 § Main Page § Politics § United States ‡ Comments (0) °