June 29, 2010: The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet

Finally, the release date for David Mitchell's next book, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet, has been announced.

I found a description on an English website, http://www.whsmith.co.uk/CatalogAndSearch/ProductDetails-Deshima+-9780340921579.html ,:

'The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet' Description


In 1799, Jacob de Zoet disembarks on the tiny island of Dejima, the Dutch East India Company's remotest trading post in a Japan otherwise closed to the outside world. A junior clerk, his task is to uncover evidence of the previous Chief Resident's corruption. Cold-shouldered by his compatriots, Jacob earns the trust of a local interpreter and, more dangerously, becomes intrigued by a rare woman -- a midwife permitted to study on Dejima under the company physician. He cannot foresee how disastrously each will be betrayed by someone they trust, nor how intertwined and far-reaching the consequences. Duplicity and integrity, love and lust, guilt and faith, cold murder and strange immortality stalk the stage in this enthralling novel, which brings to vivid life the ordinary -- and extraordinary -- people caught up in a tectonic shift between East and West.

I just noticed that the UK release date is April15th, 2010.  Amazon.uk... so tempting...

Lolchair Is My Friend

I am fascinated by anthropomorphism and simulacra, and the mysteriously whimsical workings of the human brain that engenders them.  Lolchair is the perfect example of the way the mind "humanizes" the nonhuman.  For more "object-oriented" fun, visit the Lolchair website at http://www.lolchair.com.

I am still dipping my toes in Stewart Elliott Guthrie's deep tome, Faces In the Clouds:  A New Theory of Religion, which covers this subject as it relates to religion. This book puts forth the theory that early humans with anthropomorphic tendencies had a better chance of surviving.  Simple example of this theory:  If you see a shape and you think it looks like a bear or some other threatening creature, then your survival chances are better than if you think it is just a rock.  If it is indeed a rock and not a bear, no harm done.  However, if it is indeed a bear and you don't interpret it as a potential threat, then your chances of survival go down. 

I have also been sampling a variety of other thought-provoking books on evolving scientific perceptions of human mind and consciousness.

When They Severed Earth From Sky:  How the Human Mind Shapes Myth by Elizabeth Wayland Barber and Paul T. Barber - Dr. Barber, one of my favorite authors, who co-authored this book with her husband, also a professor at Occidental College in Los Angeles, explores the way myths preserve historical truths.

Consciousness Explained by Daniel Dennett - Computers, brains, and more!  Older book, with lots of geeky, mathematical goodness.

Proust and the Squid:  The Story and Science of the Reading Brain by Maryanne Wolf - Questions the notion that humans are really "born to read".

Outliers and other books by Malcolm Gladwell - Gladwell makes interesting assumptions and turns common perceptions of reality inside out in an interesting way.

Quirky Roadtrips for Armchair Travelers

Here are a few of my favorite nonfiction travel books with a focus on the humorous and/or meditative by some great writers.

Travels With Charley:  In Search of America - John Steinbeck
The classic of this genre, which debuted in 1962, Steinbeck and Charley, Steinbecks's standard poodle, lead the way.

Blue Highways:  A Journey Into America - William Least Heat-Moon
Another classic published in 1982, chronicles the author's atmospheric travels down two-lane, back roads in an old van.

Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches From the Unfinished Civil War - Tony Horwitz
Horwitz explores the physical and cultural landscape of the Civil War with lots of weirdly funny sidetrips, which include the consumption of raw bacon and an interlude with a master Scarlett O'Hara impersonator.  Horwitz, a Pulitzer Prize winner, is also the author several other literary travelogues including Blue Latitudes:  Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before.

Notes From a Small Island - Bill Bryson
Bryson, a master raconteur, recounts his humorously poignant, final tour of Britain, mostly by foot and by rail, just prior to returning Stateside after living in England for a number of years.  Bryson is a prolific writer with great comic wit whose booklist includes the wonderful A Walk in the Woods:  Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail.

Candy Freak:  A Journey Through the Chocolate Underbelly of America - Steve Almond
A slightly edgy, humorous memoir-travelogue of the author's quest for elusive sweeties.
Click to visit Steve Almond's website.

Assassination Vacation - Sarah Vowell
Vowell, an NPR This American Life contributor's, comic/noir take on pilgrimages to the sites of presidental assassinations.

Keep on Tech Trekkin': Yammer On

In the year since I participated in Tech Trek, Web 2.0 technologies have exploded.  Barack Obama's amazing electorial success was due in part to the use of a MySpace-clone website, which helped build an extremely dynamic ground campaign.  This landmark use of technology in American politics underscores the way that web applications have become customizable conduits between individuals and/or organizations that allow for rapid communication and response. 

The latest app that I'm playing with is Yammer.  Yammer is basically a microblogging service (like Twitter) with a business app.  I heard about Yammer on NPR's tech segment, signed up, and coaxed a couple of co-workers into signing up, who coaxed some other coworkers into signing up.  It is fun and easy to use (IMHO) and useful, according to the NPR segment, because it cuts down on email by letting people in the business or organization that uses it know what other folks within the org are doing in real time (like Twitter does with friends). 

You sign onto Yammer with your work email and it connects everyone whose work emails have the same ending.  Unlike Facebook and other public social-networking web apps, only your co-workers can see your Yammer posts.  This cuts down on exposure to distracting, non-work related posts and keeps everyone focused on company business while staying connected.  Very cool.

Santa's Little Helpers

Happy St. Nicholas Day (December 6th)!

Here he is in la belle France avec Pere Fouettard, a mad butcher/priest dude who will get you if you are naughty.  (Click link to see the French website where I found this cool picture.)

In Switzerland, St. Nick hangs with Schmutzli, a sooty, nasty dude who will carry you off in his sack if you don't watch out. (Click link to see Flickr with this great pic).

The devilish Krampus is part of Austrian (and other eastern European nations') winter holiday traditions that have merged with St. Nicholas Day and Christmas.  Krampus, which means "claw", is another bogeyman to make sure that the kiddies don't get out of line. Click here for more about Krampus.

In the Netherlands, Santa, known as Sinter Klaas, is accompanied by Schwartz Piet, an African helper in Renaissance style clothes.  Schwartz Piet is more of a friendly helper than a threat to kids.  (Click here for more on Sinter Klaas).

Have these kids been naughty?  Only Krampus knows.

Have a cool Yule!

Big Sticks: Pink Saris and The White Tiger

Serendipitously, a day or so after finishing Aravind Adiga's wonderful, Man Booker Prize-winning novel about a down-trodden young man's path to becoming a successful entrepreneur through dubious means in contemporary India , The White Tiger, I heard a fascinating story on NPR about a group of vigilante Indian women called "The Pink Saris".

The Pink (Gulabi) Gang or Pink Saris, are led by Sampat Pal Devi  and wear, what else, bright pink saris, and carry a leki stick, the weapon of choice for Indian police.  The Gulabi Gang goes around and attacks dishonest and bad folks who avoid punishment by the Indian criminal justice system through the payment of bribes and influence.  The average target of  Pink Sari attention is a male who has victimized someone poorer and less powerful, often a woman.  

I find this interesting because the term "thug" originally comes from India, derived from the term "thugee", which is a kind of organized crime, Kali-worshipping cult, who were feared bandits and thieves. The idea of this women-only group, who wear such distinctivly feminine clothing, banding together, getting thuggish for justice like a band of Wild West vigilantes, and openly taking on an unresponsive, male-dominated justice system is pretty interesting stuff.

The White Tiger has a similar theme of the weak against the strong, but Balram, the protagonist, takes on the system in a covert, murderous way rather than through direct action like the Gulabi Gang. Balram, a  Dickensian anti-hero, is a young man working in the Indian capital of New Delhi as the personal driver of Ashok, the soft, Westernized son of the family that has Balram's rural village and entire family locked in a merciless, feudal grip. Balram, the white tiger, seeks to survive the corrupt, injust world he has been locked into from birth by striking out at his employer. 

Balram is a true, old school Indian Thug, which comes from the Sanscrit word for "conceal", "sthag".  Balram hides his true feelings beneath a submissive exterior, bowing and scraping and obediently performing all the menial tasks set for him by Mr. Ashok and his family, who Balram calls animals, no matter how horrible or degrading.  Balram's spiritual link to the Thuggees is underscored by the presence of a Kali magnet on the dashboard of the car that Balram drives for Mr. Ashok.

Picture from http://www.shivani.com.au/Media/picture-galleries/Trip-to-India.aspx?imagepath=%2FMedia%2Fpicture-galleries%2FTrip-to-India%2FIndia-and-Diwali-07-080 .  Accessed 12/8/08

Arviga's novel combines an amoral protagonist a' la Camus with elements of Poe ("The Casque of Amontillado" first comes to mind) and a touch of Shakespearean tragedy (I seem to recall a reference to bloody hand-washing).  The upstairs/downstairs contrasts of Indian life in the rural "Darkness" versus the "bright lights, big city" of Delhi are sharp and startling.  T

his novel smoothly transitions from the first world, high-rise apartment where Mr. Ashok and Pinky Madam, Ashok's overly-sexy, spoiled American wife, reside in air-conditioned comfort to the third world, bug-infested, squalor where Balram and his fellow drivers spend their nights without missing a beat.  This clear and shocking dichotomy is as strong a call for social justice as anything Charles Dickens ever wrote or any picture Jacob Riis ever took.  The novel's gruesomeness and the author's use the first-person frame tale of a series of letters to a Chinese bureaucrat, among other things, also echo the building, Gothic horror of Poe's, "The Tell-Tale Heart".

Ms. Sampat Pal Devi's autobiography has been published in France.

DIY Book Bag

Cool idea from Boing Boing:  a book purse made from Reader's Digest Condensed Books.  Nice to find a use for them other than decorating chain restaurants and bars.
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/10/25/howto-make-a-puse-ou.html

Reader's Digest Condensed Books are fairly useless to most readers mainly because the idea of "condensing" literature is somewhat unsavory and anathemic to real readers (think Cliff notes).  If you look at reading as a pleasure to be savored, why would you want to snip away at tasty bits and pieces of a good book just so you could plow through it more quickly to the "main idea".  Condensing periodical articles is cool.  I totally dig Utne Reader and Reader's Digest, but forget condensing novels.  If it is worth reading, it is worth reading in its entirety, IMHO.

Freedom to Savor the Salacious and Sample the Staid

I went to see my cousin's CofC class production of the play, Quills.  The play is about the Marquis de Sade and is quite provocative.  It was made into a movie starring Geoffrey Rush.  It brought to mind discussions I had in library school with fellow students about censorship and "thought crimes".  Banned Books Week starts tomorrow, too, so the subject of intellectual freedom is at the forefront of my mind.

Personally, I don't think that knowing and thinking about things is the same as doing them.  Thought crimes don't exist in my world.  Even thoughts/concepts that may be unpleasant to me are fodder for books, articles, and discussion.  I believe people should be free to think and write about anything they like as long as they are not planning or inciting crimes.  Not everyone agrees with this and I do find hateful pundits to be extremely unpleasant but I think that holding the ideal of intellectual freedom above all my personal inhibitions and preferences is essential for my practice as a public librarian. 

To paraphrase Ranganathan, "Every book its reader and every reader its book."  Yes, indeed!

Picture from http://media-2.web.britannica.com/eb-media/23/115523-004-FA619CA3.jpg .  Accessed 12/8/08.

My Life Post-Harry: What I Am Waiting For

I am not exactly "waiting" for The Tales of Beedle the Bard in the way I waited for Deathly Hallows, but I will buy it and I will read it, mostly for background info.  My capability for anticipatory zeal is not piqued in the slightest by any of the HP movies.  They have not been all that great with the exception of the Cuaron effort.

Here's what I am waiting for.

*David Mitchell's new book about Dutch traders in Japan in the 18th or 19th century on the island of Dejima (or Deshima).

*A new book in Holly Black's Modern Tales of Faerie series or any YA book or any book by Holly Black.

*Wendy McClure's promised tome about disturbing children's books.

*The movie version of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.

*Another season of Flight of the Conchords.

*Finding a copy of Sarah Kider's Mermaid Song to purchase on CD or by audio download.

The waiting is not the hardest part.  The real problem is that a good "wait" is hard to find.

Random Reading: Bookmarks and Books

While reading a great article in the Charleston City Paper (I really have to give props to their Web 2.0 skillz) I found a new bookmarking site, Mister Wong.  It appears to be a multi lingual version of Del.icio.us, which I find really interesting.  I like messing around with languages, words, idioms, etc, and I don't mind subtitles.

During the process of importing some Del.icio.us bookmarks into Mr. Wong, I found a new Library 2.0 site, Open Library, which wants to create a web page for every book, according to their site info.  Looks like an interesting site to keep an eye on and play around with.

I must say that Del.icio.us' new look is much more graphically appealing.  The import/export process was also really easy.  This was the first time, I tried that, too.   I went ahead and imported all my random Del.icio.us bookmarks into one account, as well.  Now to trim the tags.

Meme Streak: The Day After Caturday

I have memes on the brain. 

While reading a William Gibson novel, Pattern Recognition, a virtual, semiotic funfest, I wanted to refresh my understanding of the word "meme".   Discovering that my bed-worthy Webster's Collegiate, circa 1977, was too outdated to help and my newish Websters 3rd too heavy for horizontal use, I decided take the contextually-appropriate Google/Wikipedia route.  This led to more info grazing and I found this online Time article about 4chan, an "off the chain" website, where users share assorted visual tidbits and other stuff. 

According to Time, 4chan is a meme hothouse which started out as an anime/manga fan site modeled after a Japanese site called 2chan.  At some point, 4chan had a Saturday thing called "Caturday", where users posted funny pictures of cats.   This in turn spawned the LOLcat phenom.  Interesting stuff.

Lately I have been really interested in the whole viral info transmission concept.  It figures in several good nonfiction books I have been reading; The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell and The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson.  The internet is a great place to see it in action because it happens so quickly and so visibly. 

It is also interesting to me that 4chan is a mostly unrestricted website that allows for a high degree of anonymity.  I think that theoretically, at least, information evolution/transmission probably occurs more rapidly in this kind of open environment (the watched pot and all that).  I found the anime/manga connection interesting too.  Otaku figure heavily in Pattern Recognition as well.  Just another drop in the meme pool.


Internet People by Dan Meth




Weezer's Take

A Little Tab'll Do Ya!

I am really lovin' the tabs so now I am converting the library blogs that I work on to tabbed versions using the CSS stylesheets from http://www.btemplates.com/ . I can see possiblities for major improvements in navigation and access to info using these templates. Click the links below to see what tabs can do. Please note that these are still under construction.

http://standrewslibrary.blogspot.com/

http://standrewslibrarychildren.blogspot.com/

Picture from T.J. Wagner's Tab Gallery. Available at http://home.epix.net/~tjwagner/myfulltabbottle.jpg. Accessed 7/14/08.

Clonification and My Year of Blogging Dangerously: Faux Wordpress Templates

Exploring the options of Wordpress has pushed me to expand my knowledge of Blogger. I have decided to stick with Blogger as my primary blogging platform for this blog. My horizon has definitely been expanded by interacting with Wordpress. I really liked using Chris Pearson's Cutline Template (Wordpress.org) on my own site but find the Wordpress.com version too constraining to use as my only blogging option primarily, as I mentioned before, because of the banning of Javascript.
I googled to see what other people were saying about the topic of Wordpress versus Blogger and found a great blog, Smithereens, with a pretty clear discussion of the limitations of Wordpress.com. I also found out that just like MySpace, Blogger has inspired folks to create CSS layouts/templates so that users can customize their blogs.
I have always used the templates that come with Blogger and have never tried actually loading my own. Apparently interest in Wordpress clone templates for Blogger is a hot and happening thing. I have tried three templates so far and I found....tah dah!!... a Cutline clone template. The tabs are web addresses not pages like the Wordpress versions and the instructions in the code are written in Spanish, but that is okay. I am plowing ahead.
I paid for a year of web hosting for my birthday last year and created a blog using Wordpress (the dot org CMS - content management system - just learned that term yesterday ; ) ) This really pushed me to learn more about the mechanics of independant blogging, which was a good thing, I think. It was very technical; not infrequently over my head. Everytime I see "MySQL", I think "my squall" and "perfect storm".
In the end, I have learned that the biggest thing about using a free blog host versus DIY blogging is that free hosting saves a lot of time and brain power. Like Lyle Lovett said in the song, "one wrong move will turn your world upside down" when you are hosting your own blog. Fixing mess-ups was frustrating and took time away from the actual process of writing something. Using these custom Blogger templates is allowing me to get under the hood and tinker around without having to do too much. It is kind of like putting on some rims versus rebuilding the engine.

Samurai Night Fever: Two Guys and a Girl

I have totally gotten into the Samurai Champloo anime series. I am now on Disc 5. Two guys, Jin, a ronin, and Mugen, a thief, are traveling with a fifteen year old girl, Fuu, who is searching for the "samurai who smells of sunflowers".   This is a great anime series for adults.  Highly recommended!!

Negatory, Good Buddy: Things Wordpress Won't Do and Some That It Does Better

Exploring Wordpress.com and comparing it to the wonders of Blogger has been added to my way lengthy list of current geekoid interests. I have been using Blogger for about 3 years and the full version of Wordpress on a paid host for 9 months. I just started messing with Wordpress.com and am learning the limitations of the free version as well as how it differs from Blogger.

I really like the fact that Blogger is pretty user-friendly and free-and-easy with the Javascript widgets. Wordpress.com is also user-friendly and has some awesome features like built-in stats but sadly it is not welcoming of widgets from other sources and Javascript widgets are strictly verboten (click here for more on that and again here for a bit more). This means that some of my all-time favorite, most visually interesting, widgets don't work on Wordpress.com's blogging platform with free hosting.

In the immortal words of Jeri Blank, "Sad."

A Few of My Favorite
Widgets Which Won't Work in Wordpress.com
(Sorry, I could not resist the urge to alliterate. It's an English Major thing.)

*Library Thing Book Covers
*Twitter Badge
*Del.icio.us Tag Clouds
*Photobucket Slide
*Project Playlist Player

Methinks Wordpress may be too serious for some of my intended audience (families with young children and teens who are more likely to respond to an eye-catching visual like a slide of movie posters than a lot of words describing the actual movie).

Wordpress.org, the platform, will let you do anything you want because you are paying to host it yourself. If you crash, get hacked, whatever, it's on you. The dotcom free hosting site is another deal entirely; a very safe, secure place to engage in serious blogging.

I do love the tabs, on Wordpress.com, though. I can see some real use for that - more static info, like library location and hours, program and event schedules, on the tabbed pages and reviews on the front page (where the blog is) sorted by categories and tags.

The categories and tags feature of Wordpress appear to offer an especially efficient way to organize and sort posts. I plan to continue to work with Wordpress to increase my proficiency with these and other features. The Trek continues.....

Happy Trails!

Wordpress

My blogs are in motion. I have combined all of my "professional" blogging for the last two years into one big ball of bloggishness. I am playing with Wordpress and checking it out. It has a nice import feature that I used to add the stuff from this blog

Posting My Secret

I am addicted to PostSecret. My daughter turned me on to it a few years ago and I have it on my My Yahoo page (my home page) and I check it each week for the new secrets. I have "read" all the books, too. It is one of the most moving art works/projects I have ever experienced.

PostSecret now has a some extra content; audio secrets, YouTube videos, a Facebook group,etc.

Trawlin' the Net For News: The Dredge Report

While looking for info on a recent political scandal in my home county (not Charleston), I discovered a wealth of SC political blogs and a social networking site devoted to user-driven newsleads. Here are some tasty samples.

FITSNews - "Conservatism with an edge" blog of Governor Sandford's former spokesperson, Will Folks/

The Palmetto Scoop - A conservative blog run by several folks including a moose. (Click here for more info.)

South Carolina Hotline blog - the SC Hotline sites are apparently by Jeffrey Sewell

South Caroina Hotline website - Really, nice directory of SC news sites and blogs.

SC Yellow Dog Democrats - Blog of SC Democratic party members (click for their "about" info)

Click here for SCIWay's directory of SC Political blogs.

More political blogs and pundits - click here.

Click here for SCIway's directory of blogs about life in South Carolina.

For news with a social networking edge on the local, national, or world level, check out NowPublic.com.

Anime for Adults

I have been really getting into the anime thing thanks to Ms. Amanda, whose business-like exterior hides mad anime/manga skillz, and Ms. Tama from JOH, Crazed Babe of Anime and Teen Anime Club sponsor at Johns Island Regional Library.

I prefer to watch in Japanese with English subtitles. I have picked up a little Japanese doing this.
I find it fasinating how much English has infiltrated Japanese. Here are a selection of some of the best stuff I have seen so far.

Anime From Akira to Howl's Moving Castle: Experiencing Contemporary Japanese Animation by Susan J. Napier is an excellent reference work for more info on anime. (Click title for catalog info on book.)

Click here for anime related items from the CCPL collection.

Movies

Akira - The classic anime movie. Extremely powerful futuristic fantasy with shades of Blade Runner, Mad Max, and Brave New World.

Steamboy - made by the same director as Akira with some similar characters. Anime Wild Wild West meets Victorian England/Jules Verne with a dash of Greek tragedy.

Whisper of the Heart - Sweet Studio Ghibli teen romance/feel-good movie. Wonderful portrayal of family life in urban, mid 20th century Japan mixed with fantasy.

Paprika - Futuristic fantasy thriller. Awake, she's a prim and proper therapist but, when she's snoozing, she transforms into Paprika, a spicy, secret psychological superheroine battling monsters from the id.

Tokyo Godfathers - A Japanese Christmas story featuring a stolen infant, a tough, runaway teen girl, and an odd homeless couple composed of a hopeless alcoholic with a secret, sad past and his best friend, a transgendered, cross-dresser, who dreams of being a mother.

Series

Cowboy Bebop - (Bladerunner + Star Wars) X cool tunes = Cowboy Bebop. This is a great series.

Samurai Champloo - Even greater series by the creator of Cowboy Bebop. Hiphop cool in samurai-era Japan with great tongue in cheek humor and wonderful characters on a quest. Visually, this is the best of all the anime movies or shows that I have seen. Incredible stuff.

Witch Hunter Robin

- Beautiful, atmospheric future fantasy with witches. Has an X-files vibe plus Gothic Lolita cool clothes.

Book TV and Booknotes on C-SPAN

I don't have full-strength cable at home, just a diluted el cheapo version that costs about $10.00 a month. I get good reception of the basic local channels, which I want, plus some junky shopping channels, that I block out. I read alot and watch videos so I really don't need more TV channels to tempt me.

Yesterday, while pulling an all-nighter with my successfully post-operative parental unit at the hospital, I encountered Book TV, a C-Span 2 channel that broadcasts nonfiction book authors giving talks about their works. Thought it was pretty interesting stuff, well, interesting to me, anyway. Tom Wolfe was talking about trophy wives and corporate culture at Enron and Silicon Valley and so forth. Apparently there is a related show called "Booknotes" that has been on C-SPAN since 1989. Who knew?

Booknotes offers hundreds of streaming video interviews of authors. Click for link to Erik Larsen's 2003 interview about The Devil in the White City.

I plan to take a closer look at Booknotes and the online version of Book TV. I am going to check out Book TV again, too, the next time I have "real" cable access.