Daily Thoughts 6/14/2010

Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin recites his poem before Gavrila Derzhavin during the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum exam on January 8th, 1815. Oil on canvas. 123,7 × 195,5 cm. Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum (All-Russia A. S. Pushkin Museum), St. Petersburg.

Daily Thoughts 6/14/2010

Two books came in for me to read today. The first is Enders Game by Orson Scott Card which is required reading for my Readers Advisory 101 Class. The second is The Affinity Bridge by George Mann. This is a steampunk novel with the main characters being two detectives. I rather like cross genre novels. It makes things interesting.

I stopped reading A Novel Bookstore. The setting and the style did not appeal to me. I read the requisite fifty pages into the novel and it was enough. I am still reading The Viscount Who Loved Me. It is horrid. Fat corgis, flirting, and masked balls just are not my style. It is a definite reminder of how bland peoples lives must be to read this kind of romance novel.

I have also started on Enders Game by Orson Scott Card. It has a much different feel reading it than the first time I read the science fiction novel. There is a much stronger feeling of cruelty and desperation in the novel. It is also something I have to read for the Readers Advisory 101 class.

I started a few pages into The Affinity Bridge. The novel starts in India. I am reading three novels right now.

Today was quiet and steady. Three of my new bookmarks were printed up. Hopefully, they will be appreciated. I also spent some time checking the back orders for Book Wholesalers Incorporated. The books in storage are being shifted around. I also spent some time looking at MP3 Players in the library setting. Some libraries loan MP3 Players out.

Today was spent on minor details; checking on the poetry program and graphic novel program, looking at minor corrections on the website, and other small things. It is the small things that catch you.

Daily Thoughts 6/13/2010

Dr. Seuss cartoon, 14 November 2006, Image From Wikipedia Article by Greg Williams, Creative Commons Attributions-Share Alike 2.5 Generic on Wikimedia

Daily Thoughts 6/13/2010

During the last several days, I have been watching a dvd called Seuss Celebration 9 Favorite Televised Classics. It includes The Lorax, The Cat In The Hat, Pontofell Pock and His Magic Piano, Green Eggs and Ham, Sneetches, Zax, Grinch Night, The Grinch Grinches The Cat In The Hat, and The Hoober Bloober Highway. Some of these are cartoons which I had never heard of before. They are both longer, more colorful, more oddball, and stranger than the books of the same name.

All of them include singing and piano music. Each video comes with a sing a long which was a surprise. Dr. Seuss used piano music in many of his works. His live action movie, The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T is very musical. The vision you get of how he intends to have his books read is very different if you watch the cartoons. I very much liked watching The Lorax. I never read the book. My favorite of the collection was Green Eggs and Ham.

The arrangement of the menus is a little odd to look at. It could have been different. I am also not certain that the transfer from the older tapes is perfect, but it is good enought to enjoy.

This collection is nothing like the Beginner Book Videos of Dr. Seuss, each story includes a lot of material that is not in the books. Each cartoon runs for a full half hour in this version, much longer than it takes to read the books. It also has the cartoon characters singing parts of the text you would have read in the book. The Beginner Book Videos are a lot more formal.

The Cat In the Hat has a very different feel than the modern interpretation of Cat In The Hat like you might see with Jim Carrie. It is not a Cat In The Hat you may be familiar with. The cartoon character is much more of a tricky rascal. It is much closer to Dr. Seuss's cartoon works which you might see in the three volume set, Theodor Seuss Geisel, The Early Works of Dr. Seuss. I enjoyed watching it. I think children and adults will like it. I am a big fan of Dr. Seuss.

I did not read that much this weekend. I spent more time writing reviews. I just started reading an uncorrected proof of A Novel Bookstore by Laurence Cosse. The book is published by Europa Editions, it is coming out in September 2010 and is translated from French. So far, I have figured out that this is a mix of a suspense story and a book about literature set in France.

Digital Self Publishing Shakes Up Traditional Book Industry, an article from the Wall Street Journal. Digital Self Publishing Shakes Up Traditional Book Industry http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704912004575253132121412028.html