Morning Thoughts

American Treasure Room, U.S. Library of Congress. I visited here when I was at library school. There is an original Gutenberg Bible under glass.

I decided I needed a break from nonfiction. On the train home last night, I read The Collected Works of Tony Millionaire's Sock Monkey, Volume Three and Four. It was lightweight and funny. Something which made me laugh and smile a bit. It didn't take me that long to finish. As usual Uncle Gabby the Sock Monkey, and Drinky Crow, the stuffed Crow were up to mischief. This time they were playing with a victorian hunters taxidermy exhibit with various stuffed critters deer, birds, and insects. Afterwards they went on a hunting exhibit with a butterfly net to collect some small lizards, beetles, and ladybugs.

After finishing Sock Monkey, I started on a new collection of science fiction short stories, Pump Six and Other Stories by Paolo Bacigalupi. The writing is quite interesting. It is focused on the environment and biology. The characters come from a variety of different walks of life. For example in the short story, The Fluted Girl, it seems to be set somewhere in Eastern Europe. A girl and her sister have been transformed into living instruments with fragile hollow bones by their owner. It is a tragic story. It is also one of the free sample stories avaialable on Paolo Bacigalupi's web site. http://windupstories.com/pumpsix/the-fluted-girl/ . There is some mature content in this story. It looks like quite an interesting site.

I plan on reading some more of the short stories on the train. I work late tonight, so I am off this morning. It is rather odd, having to work very late one night, then very early the next day. I really should not complain. I have a job in an American economy that could possibly be heading south very soon.

Tomorrow, I go to a seminar on poverty alleviation. I wonder how libraries can alleviate poverty. My boss asked me to go. I hope, I at least get to keep a name tag as a memento. The next day after that is the New York Comic Con so I should have a very interesting week.

I was thinking about muckraking stories this morning. One problem I have with them is that they solve nothing. They just point out problems which are often obvious. You get to read how terrible things are. I am beginning sometimes it is more constructive to read about how to invest in renewable energy than to read about how terrible the oil, gas, and coal companies are. Companies are made of people. Some are terrible and some aren't. Muckraking in some cases seems to distract people from creating solutions.

I found an interesting article in Library Journal this morning. It is Venezuelan saber rattling against the U.S. Library of Congress. I found it to be profoundly entertaining in a way. I have actually been to the Library of Congress. You can't go inside the actual building if you are a visitor, but you can look down into the reading room from above.

http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6551558.html

Here I am in the afternoon. Two books or should I say graphic novels came in for me. They are The Rabbi's Cat and The Rabbi's Cat 2. Dine-O-Meter Deb said she was reading The Rabbi's Cat as part of the Graphic Novel Challenge. I wanted to see what it was about so I requested it to be sent to my library.

I also took a minute to look through the New York Times Nonfiction Bestseller List and put Earth The Sequel: The Race to Reinvent Energy And Stop Global Warming by Fred Krupp who is the President of the Environmental Defense Fund.

I think right now, I have more than enough to read. Books are starting to pile up and I now have three small stacks of books to read.

The Adventures of Sock Monkey-- Tony Millionaire

How does one describe Tony Millionaire's work? Is it salty like a sailor? is it about drunken toys like Uncle Gabby The Sock Monkey, or Drinky Crow, a sawdust stuffed crow made out of an old pea coat with button eyes. Tony Millionaire is one of my favorite cartoonists. His cartoons seem to escape the panels. He varies the size of his panels and sometimes lets the word slip out of the balloons.

I am not a cartoonist, but I like the elegant black and white ink drawings he uses. They are often quite detailed. I also like the setting of his cartoons; a kind of child's 19th century dreamland populated by irreverent old fashioned children's toys. These toys are boisterous, violent, destructive, vivid and drunken. They are always fighting with mice, birds, bats, alligators, and other small animals.


In The Adventures of Sock Monkey, the places where the stories occur are interesting; aboard old sailing ships and victorian houses. Much of the time the ships or houses end up getting burned down.

Thre are some very interesting moments in the panels. I like when Uncle Gabby the Sock Monkey is talking to the shrunken head from Borneo and I also like when Drinky Crow sings O' Whisky Made The Bosun Call. I also like that when grownups are drawn in the panels, the sock monkey and crow turn into ordinary toys.

The Adventures of Sock Monkey won the Eisner Award for best comic. This graphic novel is a graphic novel which I can read again and again. Despite the toys, this is not a comic for small children. Tony Millionaire has a separate site for his Maakies comic strip. http://www.maakies.com/

I read this as part of the Graphic Novels challenge. It is the first graphic novel which I read as my promise to read six graphic novels this year.

Graphic Novels Challenge, Morning Thoughts

I just liked the picture. To do this challenge, I need to read six graphic novels by the end of the year between January and December 2008. I think I may have already done this. Anyways, they are supposed to be award winning graphic novels.
So here is a list of a few awards:

The Harvey Awards http://www.harveyawards.org/ ,
The Ignatz Awards http://www.spxpo.com/ignatz.shtml ,
The Eisner Awards http://www.comic-con.org/cci/cci_eisners_07win.shtml#winners

Feel free to join me in this challenge. It is very simple, read six graphic novels between January and December 2008. If you want to join me, you can post the six graphic novels you are interested in reading in the comments section of this post.

Good morning. I have started reading The Philosophers Apprentice by James Morrow. James Morrow is rather interesting he; writes philosophical and theological science fiction. His writing is rather unique in style and substance. He is a rationalist. James Morrow's blog is at
http://james-morrow.livejournal.com/ . It is rather interesting in that it does not shy away from religion and other controversial subjects. There are some pretty interesting ideas.

I have had to look more at the RUSA Reference and User Services Association guidelines. I read the guidelines for how to do virtual reference. I have been doing email reference for a little while.

Something which I found that was interesting in the RUSA guidelines is a guide for how to write reviews if you are a librarian. This is a pretty solid outline of the review process in professional literature. This covers all sorts of reviews; everything from videos, books, fiction, nonfiction, and other types of literature. http://www.ala.org/ala/rusa/protools/referenceguide/ElementsforReviews.pdf