So, I've been meaning to write this for a couple of weeks, but life got hectic there for a minute. I read Rick Yancey's The Monstrumologist. Yes, it's written for younger readers than I, but I'm not going to lie; I like reading YA fiction.
Overall, I enjoyed this book. It's a little long for younger readers (448 pages), and it takes a little while to get into the action, but once it gets going it's hard to put down. There are some pretty gruesome scenes, so it's definitely not one for the weak-stomached reader.
The most interesting part, in my opinion, was the almost homoerotic way in which the narrator describes his guardian, for whom the book is titled. Will Henry is a 12 year old boy whose parents have died in a fire. His father's employer, the Monstrumologist - Pellinore Warthrop, takes him in and employs him as an apprentice. Because of Will Henry's age, maybe I'm reading a little too much into it, but throughout the book, his descriptions of Warthrop call to mind those of an admirer. And towards the end of the book, Will goes so far as to deny, rather weakly, his love for Warthrop. He does so in such a way as to make the reader wonder who he's trying to convince, himself or the audience? It's also possible that Warthrop has similar feelings for Will. Many times he declares that Will Henry is "indispensible" to him, and while this could just be because he relies on Will Henry to take care of him and his home, when coupled with Will Henry's descriptions, it's clear that the two have a very strange relationship.
Another possibility is that Will Henry, having lost his dearly-beloved father, is just looking for someone to fill that space. Because both parents were ost in such a traumatic experience, peraps this need borders on obsessive, which would explain the doting sketches of Warthrop.
Either way, something is happening between these two, and it isn't "normal."
The ending leaves room for a sequel, which has been publilshed under the title, The Curse of the Wendigo. I'm anxious to see if Yancey intends to turn this into a series, and if so, where Warthrop and Henry's relationship is going.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
LIScareer | Career Strategies for Librarians-Cataloginng
LIScareer Career Strategies for Librarians
I'm taking LIS 6711 (Organization of Knowledge) this semester, and to be honest, if you had asked me 20 min ago if I would ever consider becoming a cataloger, the answer most certainly would have been "NO!" However, after reading this article it just might be something I look into a little more. Firstly, it certainly isn't a bad idea in this job market to pursue jobs that noone else wants. But more than that, I really like the idea of doing some detective work to figure out how best to catalog an object. Murray makes cataloging sound like something a nerd like me could really get into. The part when he talks about having to spend time perusing the items in order to catalog them effectively sounds awesome. I already spend great swathes of time looking up people, places, and things I hear, read or see. Mention the name of an artist, and for the next three hours, I'm going to read web-bios, look up works, check out articles about the places they lived, perhaps read the bios of friends or enemies, learn about the regions they came from or the time period in which the lilved. The list frequently goes far beyond this, and more often than not I wind up reading about something and don't really remember how I got there. At times like these I love the "Back" arrow. Anyway, back to cataloging. My main point is that I think you should read this article, if you're at all interested in LIS. And it's certainly made me think about changing tack :)
I'm taking LIS 6711 (Organization of Knowledge) this semester, and to be honest, if you had asked me 20 min ago if I would ever consider becoming a cataloger, the answer most certainly would have been "NO!" However, after reading this article it just might be something I look into a little more. Firstly, it certainly isn't a bad idea in this job market to pursue jobs that noone else wants. But more than that, I really like the idea of doing some detective work to figure out how best to catalog an object. Murray makes cataloging sound like something a nerd like me could really get into. The part when he talks about having to spend time perusing the items in order to catalog them effectively sounds awesome. I already spend great swathes of time looking up people, places, and things I hear, read or see. Mention the name of an artist, and for the next three hours, I'm going to read web-bios, look up works, check out articles about the places they lived, perhaps read the bios of friends or enemies, learn about the regions they came from or the time period in which the lilved. The list frequently goes far beyond this, and more often than not I wind up reading about something and don't really remember how I got there. At times like these I love the "Back" arrow. Anyway, back to cataloging. My main point is that I think you should read this article, if you're at all interested in LIS. And it's certainly made me think about changing tack :)
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Perdido Street Station Review
I originally began blogging as part of an assignment, but I'm going to see if I can stick with it for a little while. So, having just finished reading China Mieville's Perdido Street Station, I figured I could post a review.
Overall, I like the book, but there are definitely some drawbacks. I'll start with the negative to go ahead and get it out of the way. First off, OMG, 710 pages is kind of a lot. I mean, sometimes, an author needs some time to fully flesh out a story, and sometimes an author could have used a better editor. Kudos to China* for keeping my attention that long, however every few chapters I would find myself skimming over swathes of useless information.
This lead to my next issue. I love science fiction as much as the next nerd, but when an author invents a new creature, place, or concept we, the audience, need an explanation or at least some context clues so that we can get an idea of what it is or means; otherwise it's a waste of time and ink. This happens a few too many times for me to overlook it. I'd love to know what some of these things are, but China just moves right along, sometimes repeating the names, but still without providing any defining information. If they aren't important enough to the plot to tell us what they are, then don't mention them at all. That's an easy way to cut down a few pages.
On the flip side, sometimes China gets a little too caught up in explaining things. After the first few encounters with the monsters much of the book is built around, the reader has a pretty clear idea of how these creatures look. After that it gets to be a little much to have to re-read descriptions of their multiple, unmatched limbs and dream-inducing wings. Having recently learned about "purple" writing in an afternoon lost in the inter-webs, I would like to use it here to describe a great deal of this book. Sometimes, a little over-the-top description can be fun. But in the future, China, let's try to tone it down.
This tendency towards more violet hues of description may have also led Mr. Mieville to lean a little heavily on his nearest thesaurus. From the book jacket I learned that China was pursuing his doctorate in Economics from the London School of Econ, or at least he was whenever it was published. Good for you! However, it becomes kind of off-putting when for the first few chapters I had to grab a dictionary every third word to look up something that would have been better put in more simple terms. It really just gave the impression that China is trying to hard to be high-brow. My apologies for not providing examples...twas a library book and I returned it earlier today.
Now, onto the good. I really enjoy most of the main characters. The most important players are pretty well described, and each is pretty easily related to due to character flaws or baggage. I have to say that my favorite is the Weaver, but I won't go beyond that so as not to give anything away.
The storytelling is pretty good. It takes China a little while (oh, about 250 pages) to really get into the swing, but once the action starts it becomes easier to get lost in the adventures of the characters. A positive is that the ending is kind of bittersweet for all involved. While feel-good endings do just that, they just aren't as plausible and can really wreck a good story. But at the same time, you certainly don't want everyone killed off. This particular ending, while somewhat anticlimactic, is believable.
Unfortunately, China brings up some really interesting points about a number of things that aren't really resolved. There are also some plot lines that sort of trail off into nothing and disappear. So, overall, on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the best, I'd give this book a 3. It's not bad if you have the time, but it certainly isn't life-changing. I won't be re-reading it, but I will certainly give China another chance.
*Just for the record, I consider myself to be on a first-name basis with...well...everyone.
Overall, I like the book, but there are definitely some drawbacks. I'll start with the negative to go ahead and get it out of the way. First off, OMG, 710 pages is kind of a lot. I mean, sometimes, an author needs some time to fully flesh out a story, and sometimes an author could have used a better editor. Kudos to China* for keeping my attention that long, however every few chapters I would find myself skimming over swathes of useless information.
This lead to my next issue. I love science fiction as much as the next nerd, but when an author invents a new creature, place, or concept we, the audience, need an explanation or at least some context clues so that we can get an idea of what it is or means; otherwise it's a waste of time and ink. This happens a few too many times for me to overlook it. I'd love to know what some of these things are, but China just moves right along, sometimes repeating the names, but still without providing any defining information. If they aren't important enough to the plot to tell us what they are, then don't mention them at all. That's an easy way to cut down a few pages.
On the flip side, sometimes China gets a little too caught up in explaining things. After the first few encounters with the monsters much of the book is built around, the reader has a pretty clear idea of how these creatures look. After that it gets to be a little much to have to re-read descriptions of their multiple, unmatched limbs and dream-inducing wings. Having recently learned about "purple" writing in an afternoon lost in the inter-webs, I would like to use it here to describe a great deal of this book. Sometimes, a little over-the-top description can be fun. But in the future, China, let's try to tone it down.
This tendency towards more violet hues of description may have also led Mr. Mieville to lean a little heavily on his nearest thesaurus. From the book jacket I learned that China was pursuing his doctorate in Economics from the London School of Econ, or at least he was whenever it was published. Good for you! However, it becomes kind of off-putting when for the first few chapters I had to grab a dictionary every third word to look up something that would have been better put in more simple terms. It really just gave the impression that China is trying to hard to be high-brow. My apologies for not providing examples...twas a library book and I returned it earlier today.
Now, onto the good. I really enjoy most of the main characters. The most important players are pretty well described, and each is pretty easily related to due to character flaws or baggage. I have to say that my favorite is the Weaver, but I won't go beyond that so as not to give anything away.
The storytelling is pretty good. It takes China a little while (oh, about 250 pages) to really get into the swing, but once the action starts it becomes easier to get lost in the adventures of the characters. A positive is that the ending is kind of bittersweet for all involved. While feel-good endings do just that, they just aren't as plausible and can really wreck a good story. But at the same time, you certainly don't want everyone killed off. This particular ending, while somewhat anticlimactic, is believable.
Unfortunately, China brings up some really interesting points about a number of things that aren't really resolved. There are also some plot lines that sort of trail off into nothing and disappear. So, overall, on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the best, I'd give this book a 3. It's not bad if you have the time, but it certainly isn't life-changing. I won't be re-reading it, but I will certainly give China another chance.
*Just for the record, I consider myself to be on a first-name basis with...well...everyone.
Friday, July 2, 2010
Flickr
I had some fun today playing around with Flickr, and I definitely want to upload some things. It occured to me a couple of months ago to try to start up a website to post pics of St. Pete, as most of my family and friends live pretty far away. I take pics with my phone pretty much everyday, and I figured this would be a cool way for them to kind of see what I'm doing. Flickr is a much easier alternative :) I may yet go throught the work of building a site, but until I get around to that I am deffinitely going to use Flickr.
Up until now, my knowledge of Flickr involved one of my art history professors pulling photos of art for her slideshows. Oftentimes, they would end up being tourist pics, which always made class a little more humorous...like this one.
Up until now, my knowledge of Flickr involved one of my art history professors pulling photos of art for her slideshows. Oftentimes, they would end up being tourist pics, which always made class a little more humorous...like this one.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Wiki, wiki, wiki
Everyone has encountered Wikipedia at some time or another, so I've known about the general ideas behind wikis. As a tool, I do really like the idea that anyone can add to, edit, etc...it's a very cool collaborative/communal concept. I hadn't realized that places like libraries used wikis for communication among themselves and to provide info to their users. It makes perfect sense, but because I didn't know about, and hadn't really ever been directed to one before, I'm not sure how effective they are. I could see wikis being a good tool for something like the 2006 ALA convention. Having a central location where people from around the country can communicate about an event is great. Interoffice wikis could be very useful, too. If the library you work at has just implemented a new program, a wiki could be used to troubleshoot, give tips and pointers, and just overall help with the changeover.
Google Docs
I've opened a few attachments in Google Docs before, and just didn't pay attention to the other features. Having just read about the various collaborative tools, I'm pretty impressed. And conveniently, I have another class in which I have to write a paper and create a presentation with a group, so I'm definitely going to suggest we utilize Google Docs. I was just complaining the other day about how difficult it was going to be to work on a group project without the benefit of meeting with my group members, but if we can coordinate times to work in Google Docs together, it'll be the next best thing. Being able to simultaneously edit and chat while trying to piece this paper together will be a big help.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Library Thing
I may have gotten carried away for a little bit on the Library Thing... There is a similar app on Facebook called "Visual Bookshelf" that I've used before, and really enjoy. I love an excuse to remember books I've read, and oftentimes I find myself rekindling relationships with authors I had forgotten. As I'm writing, I keep remembering things I want to add to my Library Thing list, so I keep bouncing back and forth when something piques my memory. I'm a very visual person, so I really like that there is a cover image displayed when one searches for a book. There have been a couple of times that I've started with a memory of what the cover looked like, then a little bit about the plot, and from there either struggled to piece together either the author or title, or sometimes, in a flash of brilliance, remember the whole thing!
I think I'm going to do a quick comparison of both Library Thing(LT) and Visual Bookshelf(VB) to give you an idea of the things I like and don't like about each and why. Both serve the function of allowing the user to keep a record of the things that he/she has read. As I said, I really like this. Not only does it keep me from acciddently repeating books (it's happened a couple of times that I've gotten a few chapters in to something and started to realize that I've already read it), but it helps, as I said above, me to rehash things I've read and jogs my memory about authors that I had forgotten. As far as the interface goes, VB has a much more polished look to it. Very clean and user friendly. LT is a little more visually rough around the edges. It kind of reminds me of the St. Pete Library's catalog, Polaris. Both of these are functional, but it looks like they were designed by book-people, not computer people. LT does allow the user to search for books in a number of ways, which I do really like. VB, unless I'm mistaken, just searches Amazon.com, while LT let's the user choose among hundreds of different databases. I also like that in LT, the user can "catalog" a book if he/she can't find it. VB allows for books to be added, but not in as detailed a format as LT. Both try to match a user's interests with those of users with similar collections. Both allow users to review items when they are added to the collection. The biggest differnce, I feel, is that VB is designed by computer people...by that I mean there is a way to also keep track of albums, restaurants, etc in the same format, in the same application. LT is clearly geared more for librarians, or bookish types. Both are excellent concepts, as they allow for readers to keep a collection, compare it with others, and get new ideas for further reading.
I'm not sure that I'll keep up with LT as much as I do with VB, mainly because VB is a part of Facebook, something that I interact with fairly frequently. Not to say that I'm going to immediately write LT off, but I may forget about it in a busy patch in which I don't get much reading done.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)