Good Afternoon

Ivan Kramskoy. Portrait of Leo Tolstoy. 1873. Oil on canvas. The Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia

Good Afternoon

Today was another half day. I read a bunch of magazines, Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and Library Journal. It was mostly typical material. I also prepared some more orders to go out for different kinds of books. It went fairly smoothly. On P.19, December 22, 2008 in Publishers Weekly, there is an article about Sony ebooks. Apparently, they sold 300,000 Sony ebook readers this year. The e-ink technology is changing the way ebooks are being read. There are still no figures for the Amazon Kindle ebook reader that have come out. But, this means there are going to be a lot more ebooks produced. Apparently Oprah Winfrey has come out in support of the Kindle ebook reader.

We have the new agreement for film permisions to show movies during the next year. There will be Sunday matinees coming up for family films. There also will probably be young adult films as well. Also, everything is in place in the calendar for January- February. I am still wondering about the new brochure being produced.

I had a chance to read some more of Spunk & Bite. The book is about how to improve your expressiveness and descriptive phrases so far. For example, you might say cerulean blue, or create a surprising phrase like tiny hamhanded man, or chocolate brown notebook, or savage hamster. There are reminders about style and diction. I try to keep my diction my own, not high handed or high minded in the least.

I find something particularly annoying about thesauri. It reminds me of teenage vocabularly building books. I often think it is more important to make your children read the classics to improve vocabulary than rely on pedantic lists of prosaic words. The best way to improve ones vocabulary is to read constantly. I read the advertisements on the subways, the contents of food packages (one of the main ingredients in many brands of bread these days is high fructose corn syrup), newspapers, the internet, community bulletin boards, and many other things.

The Society of Midnight Wanderers is no more. Psalms From The Wilderness http://jdrbeaudoin.wordpress.com/ told me it had gone defunct. It is one of the first places that I had posted a book review outside of my blog.

I am thinking of putting a list of links to favorite authors on my blog in the sidebar. Could you tell me if you would like this? It is something I have been thinking of for a while.

Afternoon Thoughts

International Year of the Book, Postage Stamp 1972, The Vatican. I just found the image interesting.

Afternoon Thoughts

I removed the symbol for The Society of Midnight Wanderers. They are going into hiatus and coming out with a new design. I look forward to seeing something new and interesting in the future from them. I have always liked some of the blogs on Society of Midnight Wanderers. I especially like The Uneasy Supplicant among the blog membership. http://uneasysupplicant.wordpress.com/

This morning was a much easier day. Last night, I forget my pen on the subway and ended up finishing reading Too Many Curses instead of taking notes and doing writing exercises. I enjoyed it anyways. Having more than one option to do at a time is a way to avoid wasting time. Time is not something which ever comes back to you in life. Money can be earned, but time flies away.

Sometimes, I think of my muse. I think of it not as a female muse, but as "Mr. Muse" a kind of shadow that follows me in my writing. I am beginning to think of him as an undefined character, a kind of everyman. It is a way to envision my voice in writing.

David Henderson is sending me an Advanced Reading Copy of his book, The Media Savvy Leader. It sounds kind of interesting. He has a website here. http://www.davidhenderson.com/ . He found me on Twitter.

I did more everyday things today, ordering lots of annual reports, starting on ordering industrial books, filing looseleafs, and general reference duties. I also redid the central display as a current events display. I am thinking of doing a display on the financial crisis in the United States. It might take me a couple days to do it properly. Later this afternoon, I get to do some more weeding of the collection. It is another day, another dollar. I also have to order a bunch of missing Job Information Center titles as well.

Today is wrapping up nicely. I am going to the New York Anime festival tomorrow. It will be a welcome break from the routine of the library. I will get to walk around and look at anime and manga. I hope they have martial arts films as well. I think it will be a lot of fun. The writer of Vampire Hunter D is doing a panel in the evening.

Morning Thoughts, Society of Midnight Wanderers, Afternoon Thoughts

A Bookcase

Morning Thoughts

The process has started. I spent a little time this morning discussing the idea of collection development with the new director. She made a few suggestions for me to follow. I think things could become very interesting shortly. Tomorrow we have a meeting to discuss collection development at noon with my department. I have been working up to this slowly. I hope it gives me the break which I have been seeking for a while. I already have been handed more collection development responsibilities. This is what I hope I get more than doing more programming. The least I am asking for is a partial change in title to Reference/Collection Development Librarian.

I also handed in a few books which I had read this weekend. I read some more of Ken McArthur's Impact. It gave a suggestion to write down every single skill which I could think of that I had. If it was a skill no matter how trivial, I should write it down. Also, it told me to focus on doing five things every single day towards achieving a goal. I did not have to succeed at them, I just had to try them. Again, the exercises and the daily suggestion make it leagues ahead of many business self help books.

I think I found another event to go to. Metropolitan New York Library Council is holding a networking reception with a tour of the New York Public Library Schomburg Center For Black Culture. I think it will be very interesting to go to.
http://metronylibrary.augusoft.net/index.cfm?fuseaction=1011&CategoryID=2&SubCategoryID=44

Society of Midnight Wanderers

I wrote my first post to the Society of Midnight Wanderers. It is a form of poem if you can call it that called Backward and Forward In Time.
http://midnightwanderersociety.blogspot.com/2008/09/backward-and-forward-in-time-thoughts.html

Afternoon Thoughts

A couple of books came in for me which I reserved, Stalking the Unicorn A Fable of Tonight by Mike Resnick, and Green Investing by Jack Uldrich. Also, the film Persepolis came in through interchange. I am really looking forward to watching Persepolis, the graphic novel of the same title was quite enjoyable. I often write these things down so I can know what I read at a given time.

I also requested Too Many Curses by A. Lee Martinez. It is humorous fantasy. Earlier, I reviewed The Automatic Detective on this blog. I like his writing. It has a strong sense of sarcasm and black wit to it. He also wrote Gil's All Fright Diner. He can write humor in fantasy, science fiction, and horror settings.

Nightly Thoughts

Nightly Thoughts

I was invited to join The Society of Midnight Wanderers which is quite interesting. I rather like the blogs of many of the members. Please take a look at some of the member blogs. The logo is at the top of my site. Click on the logo to go to the site.