Daily Thoughts 12/15/2009

Textile vendor in Pakistan reading the newspaper. Photo: Steve Evans "babasteve", Creative Commons Attribution 2.0

Daily Thoughts 12/15/2009

This is a list of the top 100 authors of the decade from the United Kingdom. This is a list of the top 100 authors of the decade.http://thebookseller.msgfocus.com/files/amf_bookseller/project_140/Bookseller_decade_roundup.pdf

On the way to work, I finished reading Daniel Goleman, Social Intelligence. It is a very interesting book.

I spent some time checking for books on psychology. I looked through the Psychology Today book column today. It lists three titles every other month. Choice magazine also has reviews for psychology and philosophy titles.

I also looked through Kirkus Reviews for December 1, 2009 and Deceomber 15, 2009. These are the last issues of Kirkus Reviews in print. One of the issues had the best young adult books of the year and the other had the best books of the year. There is a certain ambivalence reading these magazines because these are the last issues. Kirkus Reviews has always been one of the best review journals. Unfortunately, I don't think it did that well with promoting online reviews.

Today we have the first Graphic Novels Club. We are going to hold it in the fiction room. I have some light refreshments and we have tables and chairs set up. I've also got a number of Neil Gaiman's works. The Story of Miss Finch, Coraline, and Sandman. I could probably also get a couple of his novels, American Gods, Neverwhere, and Anansi Boys. Neil Gaiman is the honorary chair of National Library Week on April 11-17, 2010. http://www.ala.org/ala/newspresscenter/news/pressreleases2009/october2009/nlwgaiman_pio.cfm

We did the first meeting of the Graphic Novels club and discussed Sandman and various manga comics like Vampire Hunter D and Bleach. I also brought out copies of Theodor Seuss Geisel: The Early Works Volume 1 & 2 which are quite interesting to look at. Dr. Seuss did a lot of advertising comics before he wrote books for children.

On the way home, I read some of Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Diving into the Wreck which is about a woman who salvages space ships. I like the concept of taking dangerous risks to search for salvage in wrecked spaceships.

Daily Thoughts 12/14/2009

Photo of Isabel Jay as Mabel in The Pirates of Penance 1897. The image was interesting.

Daily Thoughts 12/14/2009

Today has been a day to help different people with their orders. I have been looking at nonfiction dvds, books on sermons, christian fiction, and reference books and reading various review magazines to prepare for next months orders. Mostly it has been about making sure everything is put in place. I designated some of my budget to make sure that the costs for rebinding some of the damaged books was covered.

Everything seems to be going pretty smoothly today. They are working on moving the fiction books in the mezzanine and shifting the books on the main floor to relocate the fiction books. Lots of books are being moved around right now.

We have a new sign put up for our new arrivals section.

Some of the art books which were ordered as part of our grant money have come in. I am looking at Louvre 400 Masterpieces, a Musee De Louvre Editions book published by Abrams. It is a very beautiful book with color photographs.

Tomorrow we are doing the first Graphic Novels club. It will be on Neil Gaiman, Sandman. Right now, I am looking at The Sandman Library, Seasons of Mists, Volume 4. P. Craig Russell is one of the artists. It is very interesting.

Sports Illustrated Tablet. It is an interesting mix of media and video, very different than a book. http://9to5mac.com/sports-illustrated-tablet-time-349644

Thoughts For Today

New York library on opening day, shot between 1910 and 1915 from the Library of Congress Flickr photoarchive.

Thoughts For Today

I read some more of The Public Domain on the train to work this morning. I also started reading Acacia Book One: The War With The Mein by David Anthony Durham. It is a fantasy novel.

I have been running around making sure everything was running right for the film we were showing today, Cars by Pixar. I had to switch the dvd players with the childrens room. Also, I asked a volunteer to buy soda and popcorn at the supermarket. We like to get the little single packets of popcorn because they are neater. This was billed as a family film for both childrens and adults. I ended up starting the film five minutes late. I think over twenty different people attended the film. This is actually a pretty good turnout for us.

I haven't done any ordering today. I have quite a bit of new reference books to look at to make sure everything is done correctly, and a number of looseleafs to file for the law collection.

I am waiting for them to finish process the manga and science fiction books which came in a couple days ago. I really want to look at the new Vampire Hunter D manga which came out last month. Also, Peter David did a mass market paperback novelization of the film Iron Man. I rather like Peter David's writing. He is entertaining and funny.

This afternoon, I did more looseleaf updating of the law collection. I replaced the supplement section for Basic Legal Forms With Commentary. I also put in some updated reference books in the reference collection. These are just everyday things that need to be done.

I also glanced through Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and the New York Times Book Review. I will look through Library Journal tomorrow. There was one new title in Publishers Weekly which looked interesting, Sly Mongoose by Tobias Buckell. It is science fiction.

We also have been getting requests for Neil Gaiman books, especially, the Sandman series of graphic novels. Sandman is published under the Vertigo imprint of DC comics. I'll definitely order some of these in my next graphic novel order.

The book The Public Domain has a blog about copyright attached to it. http://copyrightfree.blogspot.com