Budget Woes

I'm sure you've heard about the massive state budget cuts that have recently been proposed and will begin to be considered by Texas legislators. They're certainly alarming - the Washington Post reported that the draft would cut almost $14 billion in spending. The cuts would be made in libraries, public schools, universities, criminal justice, and health care (including mental health care). There's no doubt that cuts must be made, but when it comes to what we end up cutting, there's plenty of debate. I'm sure we're in for some, uh, "spirited" discussion in the coming weeks and months, but let's take a look at what could happen should libraries get cut.

Texas public libraries stand to be cut quite dramatically this year - in fact, it puts some significant library funds at nearly $0. Rural libraries, in particular, will be hit hard; many rely on the state funds to function and without the libraries entire rural communities could lose their only source of free computer and internet access among many other services. Public libraries provide classes on job searching and resume writing, provide books and many other types of materials for the educational pursuits of their communities, provide a source of free, life-enriching programming such as children's storytime, help acclimate new immigrants and get them on the path to citizenship, and offer assistance to people needing help locating information, just to name a few of the services they offer.

Since the economic recession hit, libraries are being used now more than ever. This is not a justification for library funding unto itself, but I think this fact raises the question of how Americans that were effected by the recession are to get back on their feet in these difficult times without their public libraries being funded appropriately. I think it's easy in a big city like Austin that hasn't been effected by the recession quite as much as other cities around the country to write it off as unimportant or irrelevant. But, as an employee of the downtown library, I can tell you that I'm at a loss as to where people would go for much needed assistance if not for us. I'm aware of the nonprofit resources out there and they're nowhere near as extensive as all of the resources we offer.

What about the guy I helped the other day that got laid off in 2008 and slowly lost his car and house and is now living at ARCH desperately seeking employment? He uses our books on cover letter and resume writing, uses our computers to search and apply for jobs, and comes to our Job Searching Computer Lab to get assistance from a librarian filling out job applications. What about the lady with two jobs and two kids I helped find some test prep materials so she can finally get her GED and, hopefully, a better job? She uses the test prep books, accesses our Learning Express Library database for practice tests, and takes her kids to children's storytime. What about the recently immigrated woman that needed help learning English so she could get established in this country? She uses our New Immigrants Center to listen to language learning CDs and attends Talk Time, a program for people to come together and practice speaking in English with one another. These are only three small examples of people in THIS city (I could list so many more!) that need the services the public library offers - can you imagine the assistance needed by residents of the harder hit rural towns in this state?

Bottom line, to invest in Texas public libraries is to invest in the future of Texas' citizens and residents. If we are to improve the unemployment rate and make our state and country more economically viable, we need public libraries to be funded well enough so people can take up educational pursuits that will help them in such endeavors. If we are to strip rural communities of library services, it will only serve to further devastate these areas.

Let your voice be heard! The Texas Library Association (TLA) has plenty of talking points and scripts you can use to contact your legislators, friends, acquaintances, family, whoever and let them know how important it is that we fund Texas libraries. Check out the links below for more info.

LINKS

Library Issues & Taking Action

Legislative Day
Join the Texas Library Association on Legislative Day February 16 and help get the word out about the importance of libraries. You can participate virtually too.

Save Our Texas Libraries
"We cannot say we believe in a strong Texas – in promoting education, economic development, and a competitive workforce – if we decrease investment in the very institutions, resources, and staff who equalize learning opportunities for everyone in Texas."

BOOKS

Dismantling the Public Sphere: Situating and Sustaining Librarianship in the Age of the New Public Philosophy

Library: An Unquiet History

This Book is Overdue!: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All

January 25th: The Day of Virginia Woolf and Barack Obama

This week I’ve been thinking about Virginia Woolf and President Obama. Woolf, born in 1882, had the anniversary of her birth yesterday. President Obama, more obviously, because of his recent State of the Union Address. But aside from this coincidence of dates, what does an English author from the early 20th Century have in common with the 44th President of the United States of America?

Books! To start, they are both prolific readers and writers.

Virginia Woolf has nine published novels, countless short stories and essays, a pair of biographies, and at least three book-length essays. Her most lauded works include: Mrs. Dalloway, A Room of One’s Own, The Voyage Out, and To the Lighthouse.

Obama's works stay primarily in the Non-Fiction category: Dreams of My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaims the American Dream, and the children’s book Of Thee I Sing: A Letter to My Daughters (this last one, I will admit, made me tear up). Obama is slightly behind in numbers but perhaps he can catch up when he retires.

What I find more interesting than their own work (if I can find anything more interesting than Woolf’s prose) is the amount of literature written about these authors. They each have a kind of mystique that attracts people to write about them.

In our catalog we have nearly fifty items about Obama, his life, and work that were published in the last year alone. Books on the election (Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime, The Year of Obama: How Barack Obama Won the White House); books on his family (The Obamas: The Untold Story of an African Family, Homeland: An Extraordinary Story of Hope and Survival); and books, of course, on his policies (The Promise: President Obama, Year One and The American Way of War: How Bush’s Wars Became Obama’s). Additionally, yesterday was the publication date for O: a presidential novel – a quasi-fictional account of the 2012 election. This one promises to be rather controversial as the author has chosen – at least for the time being – to remain anonymous

Woolf has inspired quite a bit more fiction than our President but Hermione Lee has written an amazing biography on the author. Additionally, Woolf’s life has inspired Michael Cunningham's book (and subsequent movie version) The Hours, Jacqueline Harpman’s Orlanda, Susan Seller’s Vanessa and Virginia and Stephanie Barron’s The White Garden.

We’ve got a little bit of everything here at the library!

Patterns, Profits, and Market Meltdowns

When I was in library school I was fascinated by the idea of sifting through enormous amounts of disparate information and theoretically picking out similarities of pattern and causal relationships. Wall Street is fascinated with this concept as well only they employ complex computer programs to sift through massive data steams in hopes of trying to predict how the stock market will behave and thereby profit from those changes. The problem with the over-reliance on this type of rapid, automatic type of buying and selling, which currently accounts for over 70% of trade volume, is when these algorithms begin to erroneously influence the price of stocks in nonsensical ways such as a stock losing 90% of its value in 5 minutes or shares of Apple selling at $100,000 per share. All of this is detailed in a recent article in Wired Magazine entitled, "Algorithms Take Control of Wall Street." The SEC has put into effect measures that work to control or slow down the rate at which these financial disasters unfold. However, many practitioners agree that the scale of the interconnectedness is so vast as to suggest that this web of financial algorithms has taken on a life of its own.

Non-Fiction:

Financing Technology's Frontier: Decision-Making Models for Investors and Advisors

Credit Risk: Models, Derivatives, and Management

Super Searchers on Competitive Intelligence: The Online and Offline Secrets of Top CI Researchers

Fiction:

Pattern Recognition

The Shah - A New Biography

Imprisoned by the shah for a year in 1977 at the notorious Evin prison, Stanford professor Abbas Milani has now written an enlightening biography of the of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who ruled Iran from 1941 to 1979 and whose policies inadvertently brought on the Iranian upheaval. The Shah, who decked himself out in uniforms and medals, is portrayed as being timid and indecisive and who was ill-suited for a very difficult job. Milani was able to draw on more than 400 interviews and newly released documents by the U.S. and British embassies. The Shah was a shy, coddled boy suddenly thrust into the spotlight at the age of seven by his father who had proclaimed himself king of Iran in 1925 with the help of the British. The Shah's father secularized the country and began to industrialize. In ancient Iran, Zoroastrian priests ruled in conjunction with divinely anointed shahs. This idea of melding the autocratic grandiosity of yesterday's kings and the progressive pragmatism of modern leaders was accepted by both Pahlavi shahs. Ultimately, it led to their downfall, first the father's, then the son's. What remained was a modernized populace with a hollow political infrastructure. The one area where Pahlavi diverged from his father's policies was in regards to the clergy. The Shah reinstated many of the privileges his father had wrenched from the clergy. In large part, he believed that the clerics were the best "antidote to communism," a policy which weakened the democratic left while the strength of the clerics grew.

My Deserted Island Books

One of the inevitable truths of life is its impermanence. What we think and feel today often changes by tomorrow. When pondering my favorite books, the list remains in constant flux. If I am entrenched in a fiction mood, the list is weighted towards fiction. If I am hiking often, the list leans towards natural history. If I am spending most of my free time on my porch, well, you get the point: the books that shape us change. Despite the exercise containing an ample amount of futility, I find it a worthwhile endeavor to occasionally consider what books at a particular moment mean the most to me. I have tried to distill this fluctuating list to those books that over numerous reflections continue to stand out as important books. These are my deserted island books.

The Bible
A treasure trove of stories and the subject of infinite allusions throughout history and literature

Ralph Waldo Emerson's Essays and Lectures
These writings helped to shape American thought—how a person becomes a fulfilled private individual and public citizen

Thomas Merton's Thoughts in Solitude
A pocket collection of beautifully written short meditations on life, faith, nature, and isolation.

Flannery O'Connor's The Complete Stories
For my money O’Connor wears the crown of short story queen. Tales of broken, hardworking people and the redemption they seek and sometimes find.

The Bhagavad Gita
An epic poem that begins on a battlefield and quickly delves into the crux of humanity: honor, family, war, love, dignity, and duty

Eduardo Galeano's Walking Words
A collection of brief short stories that weave creation myths with modern tragedy and humans’ interconnectivity with it all

Roy Bedichek's Adventures with a Texas Naturalist
A reflection on historical and natural Texas written after a sabbatical in the Hill Country. Written in the 1940s, Bedichek advocates for folks to connect with nature and preserve it.

What are your deserted island books?

The New Jim Crow

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander is one of the recommended books on the Library's APL Recommends 2010 Nonfiction list (formerly Good Reads).

As we celebrate Martin Luther King Day, it's sobering to read in this book that the majority of young black men in major American cities are locked behind bars or have been labeled felons for life. Although Jim Crow laws have been wiped off the books, an astounding percentage of the African American community remains trapped in a subordinate status - much like their grandparents before them. In this incisive critique, former litigator-turned-legal-scholar Michelle Alexander provocatively argues that we have not ended racial caste in America: we have simply redesigned it. Alexander shows that, by targeting black men and decimating communities of color, the U.S. criminal justice system functions as a contemporary system of racial control, even as it formally adheres to the principle of color blindness. The author believes that the The New Jim Crow challenges the civil rights community to place mass incarceration at the forefront of a new movement for racial justice in America.

Puzzles Galore

This post is puzzles only. Bubba guessed the one above a week ago, but I paid $12 for that doll--sorry, action figure--and I want to get some more mileage out of it.


This next puzzle (right) is a tough one, I hope (Bubba). It's the name of a book. Click to enlarge and then control + to make it big enough to read.


And here are three rebuses (rebii?). They are the names of authors (click to enlarge):

Stitch-opedia: Learning a New Craft

The beginning of a new year is a time when I make all sort of promises to learn and do new things. This year, to help me along with this promise, my sister (who is awesome at doing and learning things) gave me an embroidery starter kit. I’m convinced that, like knitting, embroidery is due for a comeback of epic proportions. Sadly, since she left the day after giving me this gift I found myself feeling a bit lost.

Luckily, my sister isn’t the only one invested in my lifelong learning. I turned to the library and was pleased to discover Helen Winthorpe Kendrick’s Stitch-opedia: The Only Embroidery Reference You’ll Ever Need – named one of Library Journal’s Best Do-It-Yourself books of the year. Claiming to be the only reference I’d need seemed hard to believe but I put my misgivings aside and it’s a good thing I did. Kendrick breaks the book into easy-to-digest sections including a history of the craft, a list of equipment you’ll need, an explanation of various techniques, and 30 projects of various difficulty levels to get you started. In addition to many helpful pictures to illustrate supplies and techniques, the book has one of my favorite things: an index! Learning a new craft sometimes means learning a new language as well so it’s nice to have a simple way of looking up the difference between a criss-cross stitch, a crossed stitched window, and a cross stitch.

I promise to finish up with Stitch-opedia quickly and return it to its rightful spot in the new books section on the first floor of Faulk. If you’d like to get started on your own needlework project before then, rest assured we have plenty of other resources for you. For starters, you’ll find several other books on the subject in all of our branches (look around 746.44), you can check out our Research Guide on Fabric Crafts or, if you’re feeling adventurous, you can even attend a meeting of the Austin Stitchery Guild.

Remember to check out the library for help accomplishing your own New Year's Resolutions!

Ceci Bastida

I'm always interested in discovering new alternative music from Latin America. The trouble is, my sources tend to be scattered and my discoveries haphazard. Whenever I do stumble upon an inspiring band, I am always quick to check the library's catalog to see if it's already in our collection. If it's not there, I will check the WorldCat database and potentially place an Interlibrary Loan request for it. My final recourse is to Suggest a Title in the hopes that the library might purchase a copy. All of these options are open to all patrons of the Austin Public Library. All of this is a round about way of saying that Ceci Bastida has released her first solo album since leaving Tijuana No! and playing as a backing musician with Julietta Venegas. This was news I happened upon by following NPR's Alt.Latino. Suffice it to say, I have suggested that the library order a copy of Veo la Marea for its music collection. Look for it to appear in the library's catalog in the not too distant future. Remember, once the item's record appears in the library's catalog patrons can Place a Hold on the item and have it reserved for them to be picked up at an APL branch nearest to where they live.

An Author's Authors

Paul Murray, who wrote the well-reviewed and popular Skippy Dies, noted his favorite authors in a 2009 interview. Being Irish, his favorite authors are also Irish but his other favorites are varied. Skippy Dies, his third novel, takes place at an all boys school in contempoary Dublin. The funny, tragic and very moving novel conjures a world of teen angst, sophomoric humor, and social satire. Skippy is such an endearing character, you will warm to him instantly, but be prepared that he dies in the first chapter. Then the story rewinds to show what led up to the fateful day. You will learn something of Irish life, Irish folklore, and quantum physics. Skippy Dies was longlisted for last year's Booker prize and it was included in Time magazine's books of the year, placing third in the fiction section after Freedom by Jonathan Franzen and A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan.

Murrays' favorite authors:

James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, W. B.Yeats, Oscar Wilde
J.D. Salinger, William Gaddis - post-war American novelists
Lorrie Moore - American novelist and short story writer
David Foster Wallace made him want to be a writer when he was in his 20s.
Roland Barthes - French social and literary critic (lots of authors like him)
James Merrill - American poet
Daniel Clowes - American author, screenwriter, and cartoonist

Ali Smith - British novelist and short story writer

Find what is so great about these authors in the Literature Resource Center or Jstor.

Akira in New York

Katsuhiro Otomo’s legendary Akira anime and manga series is being adapted to a live action film. The story centers around a teen biker gang member who was subjected to a government experiment which unleashes his latent powers. The movie is being produced by Leonardo DiCaprio and is directed by the Hughes Brothers who also directed this year's Book of Eli, another doomsday film. In the new film, the setting has been moved from futuristic Neo-Tokyo to an equally dystopian New York. It's too bad the action could not have stayed in Tokyo with Japanese actors. The Library has the animated action film directed by Otomo that is set in Tokyo in 2019. The call number JPN BLU FEATURE AKI tells you that it is a Blue-ray feature film (movie) in Japanese (with English subtitles).

APL Graphic Novels Book Club
Wednesday, February 16, 7:00 pm : Akira, Vol. 1 by Katsuhiro Otomo

Keep Austin Reading

We've just hung a spectacular new painting at the downtown library. It's called Keep Austin Reading (that's it above). Be sure to come see it in person, this blogger copy doesn't do it justice.

If you'd like to read what the woman in the beautiful gown is reading, Catch-22 is available, and if you identify more closely with the well-dressed man, here's Life of Pi. If the painting puzzles you; if you wonder whether the couple has just come home from a formal event or if they couldn't tear themselves away from their books to go--or maybe they just like to dress up to read?--then some art-appreciation instruction might be in order (if you find out why they have no heads, let us know):

Understanding Art Objects
Learning to Look at Paintings

And speaking of puzzles, here's another one. It's the title of a book. As always, click the photo to enlarge:

Woody Allen

I love Woody Allen. I recently picked up a book, Dread & Superficiality: Woody Allen as Comic Strip, featuring the great strips from the former newspaper funny "Inside Woody Allen." I didn't even know the comic strip existed, but I stumbled upon it while browsing the 741.5s on the 3rd floor of Faulk Central. The title alone made me giggle and seemed apropos to the Woody character most that have seen his movies or been a fan of his stand-up are familiar with. "Inside Woody Allen" is full of self-deprecating humor as well as Allen's comic pursuits of women, love, and philosophical questions. The author and artist of the strip, Stuart Hample, actually met Woody in his stand-up days and had his explicit permission, cooperation, and even assistance in writing the strips. It's been a delight to read through and I highly recommend it to any fan of Woody Allen's comedy.

I'm sure I never would have picked up the book had I not seen so many of Allen's movies. The first one I ever saw was "Manhattan;" the opening scene of that movie instantly captivated me with its awesome black and white shots of Manhattan, the Gershwin tunes, and Allen's comedic narration. I went on to watch "Annie Hall," of course, and my all-time favorite, "Hannah and Her Sisters." After just adoring those three movies, I moved on to his earlier stuff with its slapstick humor such as "Bananas" and "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (*But Were Afraid to Ask)" (unfortunately, our copies of this title were damaged or missing and it is no longer available). At this point, I've seen most of his movies (except some of the newer stuff, which I don't like as much), so I could go on at length, but I'll provide a brief list below of some of my personal favorites and some of the critically acclaimed I haven't yet seen. (Hint: click on the Catalog Record tab above the title when viewing these movies in FindIt, the online catalog, to get a description of the movie along with a list of the actors.) Granted, Woody Allen's personal life and the notorious scandal regarding his relationship with Soon-Yi Previn may not make him the most likable figure in the world this present day, but, if you can put that aside, his works are well worth the watching.

P.S. Happy New Year! When you're making your New Year's resolutions consider this quote from Allen's movie "Interiors": "You can live to be a hundred if you give up all the things that make you want to live to be a hundred."

Crimes and Misdemeanors

Two moral crises regarding love and betrayal play themselves out in this dark comedy/drama.

Everyone Says I Love You
I admit to watching this one probably hundreds of times. It's a musical with an all-star cast singing standards and dancing around. I freakin' love a good musical and nothing beats listening to celebrities belt out classic songs (this is your chance to discover the musical or not-so-musical talents of Goldie Hawn, Edward Norton, Julia Roberts, Natalie Portman, Alan Alda, and more!).

Love and Death

A co-worker suggested this one to me - it's a spoof on Russian novels such as War and Peace full of silliness and philosophical debates featuring Diane Keaton and Woody Allen. Hilarious!

Manhattan Murder Mystery

Just a fun story featuring murder, mystery, and Diane Keaton.

Match Point

This is an intense tale of love and betrayal featuring the always lovely and often seductive Scarlett Johansson.

Small Time Crooks

I just love this silly plot of dim-witted would-be crooks that end up making it big legitimately. Tracey Ullman is fantastic and was nominated for an Oscar for her role.

And the Champagne Poured

Just in time for New Year's Eve, a study may settle that long-standing disagreement over the best way to pour a glass of champagne. Scientists in France report that pouring champagne in an angled, down-the-side way is the best way to preserve its taste and fizz.

I searched the Library’s ejournal finder to see if we had the study full-text, but we don’t, but you can read the abstract from the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

The tiny bubbles that are the essence of fine champagnes are formed during the release of large amounts of dissolved carbon dioxide gas. When making champagne, grapes are fermented into wines and then bottled. Then a second fermentation is induced in the bottle, which produces carbon dioxide that carbonates the wine.

The French scientists found that pouring champagne down the side preserved up to twice as much carbon dioxide in champagne than pouring down the middle — probably because the angled method was gentler. They also confirmed that chilling champagne to a cooler temperature (39 degrees) helps reduce carbon dioxide loss and preserves the taste.

More champagne information at the Library:

The French Women Don't Get Fat Cookbook has a chapter titled “Once in a While a Little Champagne”.

The Everyday Guide to Wine, a Teaching Company dvd.

The Finest Wines of Champagne, published by the University of California Press.

The Mighty Boosh

A friend of mine recently introduced me to the BBC comedic series The Mighty Boosh. Needless to say, it cracked me up. After talking it up to friends and acquaintances, I've discovered that it's a bit of an accquired taste so consider yourself forewarned. All that aside, if you remember watching H.R. Pufnstuf in the early seventies (possibly as a child) and were intrigued by it, then I think you will readily see some similarities.

Essentially, the show revolves around the misadventures and experiences of two characters who are outwardly very different. The straight man (comedic term) is Howard Moon who considers himself a connoisseur of Jazz as well as a thespian in the deepest Shakespearian sense of the word. His alter ego is Vince Noir who is really in to fashion and following trends. So much so, he has a subscription to Cheekbone magazine that is so cutting edge it goes out of date every fifteen minutes. The show is also peppered with a rich variety of outlandish characters like Bolo the talking gorilla who gives Vince fashion advice, the acclaimed actor Sammy the Crab (who is really a crab), or Bob Fossil an all around shady character who dresses like Mr. Furley from Three's Company and strikes me as someone who wasn't happy with his life at Seinfeld's Del Boca Vista and decided to move to London. Trust me, any discription of the show cannot do it justice. It is just too funny, in my humble opinion. There are so many hilarious exchanges. Judge for yourself. The Austin Public Library has all three seasons available for checkout.


The Mighty Boosh 1
The Mighty Boosh 2
The Might Boosh 3

Mark Twain's Autobiography

Mark Twain's 743-page autobiography hit bookshelves Nov. 15, and now sits high atop the New York Times' best-seller list for hardcover non-fiction at No. 3, leaving Bill O'Reilly and Sarah Palin in the dust. The Library’s 12 copies are all checked out with holds, with more on order.

The director of the Mark Twain Project said the book is in the structure the author himself wanted. In 1904, Mark Twain wrote that he had "hit upon the right way to do an Autobiography." Instead of writing down his autobiography, Twain wanted to tell stories to another human being. And instead of telling his life story in chronological order, Twain wanted to talk about what interested him at that moment — and to allow himself to change the subject when his interest waned. It’s not a “tell all” memoir that is so popular today. Three months into the dictations, he says, "I have thought of 1,500 or 2,000 incidents in my life which I am ashamed of, but I have not gotten one of them to consent to go on paper yet." Versions of the autobiography have appeared over the years in newspapers and in print, but this is the first time it has been left in the order Twain dictated and with the honesty requiring Twain’s 100 year embargo. This first volume of the autobiography meanders through his thoughts on politics and religion, success and failure, friends and enemies. He grappled with the same things we continue to grapple with today.

Dessa for the Holidays

If you need a last minute holiday gift, I suggest the 2010 hip-hop CD by Dessa, Badly Broken Code. (Dessa was in Austin in November as part of her 40-city tour.) Singing was part of her upbringing, but performance wasn't. Her mother used to challenge her to come up with harmonies to songs on the radio. But her first career path was to get a masters in philosophy and then become a technical writer.

Then she took a stab at slam poetry competitions at the urging of a friend, which brought her into contact with the Minneapolis hip-hop scene. Through the poetry slam circuit, Dessa met members of the Doomtree collective, of which she was soon a member, and started rapping with them.

She began writing her own hip hop songs with a more writerly approach at the urging of P.O.S., another Doomtree member. Being a wordsmith, she likes the rap format where she can get a high word count in three minutes.

Her solo debut, A Badly Broken Code is loaded with literate, thoughtful rhymes influenced by her background in poetry and philosophy. I especially like the violin-enhanced Matches to Paper Dolls, a song about clinging to a failed relationship.

Check out the cd from the Library, or browse any Library location's music cd collection. You will find something to like and check out.

Badly Broken Code

Christmas Leftovers

Alistair Sim as Ebeneezer Scrooge, pre-ghostly visitations, 1951

I was going to blog about the holiday goodies you can check out from the library to have on hand to read to your kids in front of the fire or to slide into the DVD player when everybody's stuffed with Christmas goose, but you beat me to it! All the classics, like A Christmas Carol, or The Gift of the Magi, or A Visit from St. Nicholas, are just about gone! We're down to slim pickings in the Christmas department, except for music. We still have a lot of Christmas CDs to check out. Here's a list of some of them:

• Have a Crazy Cool Christmas
• Christmas Southern Soul Style
• Christmas with the King Family
• Christmas with the Annie Moses Band
• Christmas Round the World
• Christmas Cantatas
• A Royal Christmas
• Coko Christmas
• Christmas Memories, Volumes I, II, and III

And here's a list of some Christmas orphans: funky DVDs that will be alone here in the dark library on Christmas Eve if somebody doesn't take them home:

• Jacques Pepin's Christmas Celebration
• A Black Christmas
• A Colbert Christmas
• The Nightmare Before Christmas (Blu-ray)
• Palwolui Christmas
• Toy Train Christmas Memories
• An Old-Fashioned Christmas

And here's a little something new for 2011: a puzzle.
If it's a hit, I'll post more (if I can think of more).

So here goes: Guess the title of the book depicted literally in the photo to the right and win our admiration. (Click the photo to enlarge it.)

Lunch!

Lunch can become terribly boring. PB&J is quite tedious and downright unappetizing after consuming it 5 days a week for weeks on end. Taking lunch with you to work is a great way to save money, but continuously coming up with tasty things to pack in your lunch, can be a real challenge. I'm lucky to have stumbled upon Vegan Lunch Box, a great blog with tons of great ideas for packing a nutritious yet delicious lunch. I am not vegan or even vegetarian, but I do like trying to get a wide variety of fruits and vegetables in my diet, so this blog is perfect. The author, Jennifer McCann, has published two books of the same name based on this successful blog that I recently checked out from the library and they have saved my lunches. I've been eating things like Thai Spring Rolls, Black-eyed Peas and Potatoes, and Mini-Veggie Burgers and I'm happy to say that my days of PB&J are (mostly) over.

By discovering these little gems, I also found that lunch-specific cookbooks can be located in FindIt, the online catalog, by using the term "lunchbox cookery." Oh, Library of Congress Subject Headings, how mysterious and elusive you can be! Some of these say they are for kids and I think most lunch-related cookbooks typically are, but there is still a lot in these for adults to enjoy as well!

Lunch Boxes and Snacks: Over 120 Healthy Recipes, From Delicious Sandwiches and Salads to Hot Soups and Sweet Treats

Paula Deen's Cookbook for the Lunch-Box Set

The Top 100 Recipes for a Healthy Lunchbox: Easy and Exciting Ideas for Your Child's Lunches


Vegan Lunch Box: 150 Amazing, Animal-Free Lunches Kids and Grown-Ups Will Love!

Vegan Lunch Box Around the World: 125 Easy, International Lunches Kids and Grown-Ups Will Love!

Oxford English Dictionary Online

While pondering what classes to take my last semester in college I seriously considered a course in lexicography. What is lexicography you ask? The act of writing dictionaries. A noble act indeed. For a few days I could think of no better way to spend a semester than examining the intricacies of dictionary writing. My mind's eye saw bushy eyebrowed zealots amidst piles of words and a gilded scale of linguistic judgment. While my interest in taking the course thankfully waned, my interests in dictionaries did not.

The Austin Public Library offers the Oxford English Dictionary Online. The OED Online is an incredibly dynamic resource. Oxford University Press continues to provide paramount etymology and has now integrated their groundbreaking Historical Thesaurus into OED Online. A search for a specific word will now retrieve all known historical spellings, first noted usage of each spelling, as well as similar words used throughout the centuries (one of my favorite words alacrity first appeared in the English language in 1510 and was spelled alacritee). OED Online now also offers a filter search, which allows you to narrow or broaden your word nerd conundrums. Using your Austin Public Library card number you may access OED Online from just about any computer in the world.

If digital dictionaries aren’t your cup of tea, we have you covered as well. You may peruse all twenty volumes of the Oxford English Dictionary at the Faulk Central Library. It does not check out though. It weighs 130 pounds.

An interesting related read is The Professor and the Madman: a Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary. The book tells of the nineteenth century idea to create the seminal dictionary and the thousands who assisted in the dictionary's creation. Noted scholars responded to the call, but one contributor remained unique: an American expat confined to an asylum contributed thousands of entries.

Escaramuza Charra

When my wife and I were dating, she took me to a Mexican rodeo or Jaripeo here in town. It involved all of the ususal bull riding and horse roping events common to many U.S. rodeos. All of the brute force and machismo on exhibition was entertaining enough, but I think I would have really howled if it had included escaramuza charra. These events consist of teams of women dressed in brilliantly colored dresses, executing intricate movements or passes at high speeds on horseback all the while riding side saddle. No easy feat to say the least. Below I've listed some resources we have in our collection. However, remember the world's libraries are at your disposal via Interlibrary Loan.

La Charreria Mexicana : Su Historia y Practica
Charreada : Mexican Rodeo in Texas

Book vs Film

Ridley Scott’s 1982 Blade Runner is a stylish action movie about a handsome bounty hunter in pursuit of coolly attractive androids. Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, the 1968 book it’s based on, is a very different story about an unhappily married man who’s afraid he’s growing fat and bald. It’s also a meditation on religion, consumerism, community, and what it means to be human. Set in the wake of an environmental disaster, Deckard, the bounty hunter, tests the androids’ humanity with an empathy test and, if they fail, destroys them. Since the newer models are so advanced, the fakes can seem more empathetic than Deckard himself. And the question of his own humanity is not certain either.

The humans who have not left Earth for colonies either worship Mercer, a Christlike leader on television or a cheerier alternative named Buster Friendly. "Buster Friendly, a 24-hour TV talk show host who is the messiah to androids, does not even appear in the film.

A more recent book about a not-too-distant future crazed consumerist, high-tech society that you should read before Hollywood gets a hold of it, is Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart. In this over-the-top satire, the US is an incompetently run police state, and its citizens are illiterate and addicted to shopping and streaming images and audio- all on a device everyone is required to wear around their necks. Do Androids was set in 2019, and this story may be set a few years after that.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Vol 1
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Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Vol 2
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Blade Runner
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Blade Runner

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Blade Runner (Do Androids dream of electric sheep?)
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Future Imperfect; Philip K. Dick at the Movies

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A Model Prison Librarian

With over 1.4 million people incarcerated in the US, prison libraries are often inmates best link to the outside world. Sixty-eight percent of the inmates come into the system without a high school diploma. In a good prison library, they can research the legal system, take classes, participate in book discussions, gain their GED, and check out a book for recreational reading. Educating them is not only a good thing to do; it’s essential. How good a prison library is depends on the state. The law does not specify how access should be provided, so states have various interpretations. Prison libraries range from institutions that are open every day to books-by-mail programs. Some states go way beyond the minimum and provide services that model public libraries. The American Library Association and ACLU also help fight for prisoners' right to read.

The Maryland Division of Correction prison library system is an example of a model library. This fall they have bought hundreds of copies of Fahrenheit 451 and organized dozens of reading and discussion groups thanks to a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. The Maryland Correctional Education Libraries acquired two bookmobile units that travel to each pre-release library, providing prisoners with access to forty-inch smart screens, computers, wireless access, as well as databases and books.

Avi Steinberg, a prison librarian in Boston, has just written Running The Books: Adventures of an Accidental Prison Librarian. He gives literary advice, teaches creative writing, and tries to gain the inmates trust and help untangle their damaged lives, just the kind of librarian you would want in a prison library.

Comedy circa 1975

I weed the showbiz books, which is lots of fun. While I was going through the comedy department I came across I'm Dying Up Here: Heartbreak and High Times in Stand-up Comedy's Golden Era by William Knoedelseder. The book is about the Comedy Store, the Los Angeles night spot where Robin Williams, David Letterman, Jay Leno, Tom Dreesen, Elayne Boosler, Richard Lewis, Andy Kaufman, all but a few of today's big-name comics, got their start, and they worked there for free! It's hard to imagine Jay Leno and David Letterman, two of the richest guys on the planet, working until dawn just for the experience of working, then curling up to sleep on a friend's couch, but they did.

Mitzi Shore owned the Store and liked the price she was paying for entertainers: nothing. For a lot of years the entertainers didn't mind, until they noticed Mitzi was putting money in the bank while they were cadging maraschino cherries from the bar for dinner. Once the comics did the math, it was the beginning of the end.

One reason I liked the book is that I was in the vicinity at the time. We lived near L.A. in the 70s. On a big night we'd drive in and see a show at the Roxy. At the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion we laughed until we couldn't breathe because Steve Martin had an arrow through his head.
I took my mom to see Robin Williams. (He talked a lot about cocaine. Sorry Mom.) After Vietnam it seemed to me that rock and roll had stopped saying important things and that comedy was the language of subversion.

Now that I'm done with I'm Dying Up Here I'm reading Milton Berle's autobiography: Lots of knock-out dames in spangles and seltzer water in the face. It's the library. We have it all.

New Life

** UPDATE: There is mounting evidence that the science behind this finding is flawed! Read more in this good article at Slate.com. **

Yesterday NASA announced the discovery of a new type of life, not on Mars, but right here on Earth. What they found is a bacteria that can use arsenic to build the stuff of life, rather than the known elements all living things typically use: phosphorus, sulfur, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. The microbe, GFAJ-1, replaces phosphorus with arsenic, known to be toxic to most other life forms on Earth. By discovering GFAJ-1, scientists believe we will be better equipped to potentially find life on other planets considering we now know that we need to look for more than just the six elements once believed to be the only building blocks of life. As Ed Weiler of NASA said, "The definition of life has just expanded."

I just love scientific developments like these. I've always secretly wanted to be some sort of biologist studying life forms all day long. This discovery was made while NASA astrobiologists were running tests on bacteria collected from sediment in the beautiful Mono Lake. I, mean, who doesn't wish their job at least sometimes looks like this picture. I explored the NASA Astrobiology webpage and found information on some amazing sounding careers (now, all I need is another degree!). They even have an Ask an Astrobiologist feature where the public can submit their astrobiology-related questions and hear back from a professional. But you don't even have to wait because they've already answered your Niburu and 2012 question, you can view the answer here (apparently over 2500 questions have been submitted regarding the topic!).

ARTICLES and WEBSITES

Astrobiology Magazine - Searching for Alien Life, on Earth

NASA Astrobiology
"Astrobiology is the study of the origin, evolution, distribution, and future of life in the universe."

NASA-Funded Research Discovers Life Built With Toxic Chemical

NASA News Conference in its entirety: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

BOOKS

Beyond UFOs: The Search for Extraterrestrial Life and Its Astonishing Implications For Our Future

Life in Space: Astrobiology for Everyone

The Living Universe: NASA and the Development of Astrobiology

Notable Books of 2010

Each December the New York Times releases its 100 Notable Books of the year. Each year I like to compare what I have read to what the self-styled tastemakers declared best. So how many of this year's notable 100 did I read?

One.

That's not to say I wasn't reading this year, but the paltry number did surprise me. Upon reflection I realized the answer: while I read lots this year, all but a handful of those books were at least several years old.

My sole read from this year's 100 Notable Books was Robert Stones' Fun With Problems. This collection of stories portrays despicable people in often selfish situations, yet you will end up not only sympathizing with them but cheering for their redemption.

Some other books from 100 Notable Books of 2010 that caught my eye:

Fiction
David Mitchell's The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet

Tom Rachman's The Imperfectionists

Karl Marlantes' Matterhorn

Anthony Doerr's Memory Wall

Nonfiction
Lewis Hyde's Common As Air: Revolution, Art, and Ownership

Paul Greenberg's Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food

Daniel Okrent's Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition

Ian Frazier's Travels in Siberia

I'm hoping to get to a few of these, but the 2011 books are quickly approaching (not to mention 130 million books estimated to have been written in recorded history).

What were your favorite books of 2010?