Hex Hall
Sophie Mercer is a social outcast from a broken home who has finally been sentenced to the school you go to when you've been kicked out of all the others: Hecate Hall. Well, where witches, shape shifters, and faeries go anyway. Raised by a human mother and yet to meet her warlock father, Sophie doesn't know a lot about witchery (history and powers), which is kind of a drag when she gets to Hecate (Hex) Hall, because the other kids are steeped in it and even know more about her father than she does. Assigned to the school pariah as a roommate, a pink loving vampire named Jenna, Sophie is not off to a good start at her new school.
reviewdate:
Apr 14 2010
isn:
978-1-4231-2130-5
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Help, the
I'm wary of wildly popular Oprah-ish books, admittedly not because I'm afraid they'll be bad, but because I'm afraid they'll be good. It would be bad for my literary cred if I embraced every manipulative mass appeal tearjerker that came along! As it turns out, The Help is worthy of adulation. It's a brave book, written by a white author about the black servant/white employer relationship in 1960s Mississippi.
"I was scared, a lot of the time, that I was crossing a terrible line, writing in the voice of a black person. I was afraid I would fail to describe a relationship that was so intensely influential in my life, so loving, so grossly stereotyped in American history and literature." p.450
reviewdate:
Apr 13 2010
isn:
978-0-399-15534-5
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Sexy Librarian
Library literotica--I had no idea! I discovered this book when I was invited to appear on a panel with the author and looked her up, as most any librarian would. I immediately checked NYPL and was pleased to see Mid-Manhattan had three copies of the micropublished book. The whole story of how the book got published is fascinating, but I'll leave it to you to get into it. To me the craziest thing about the book is that Weist began it as part of a sculptural installation project for Cooper Union, where she got her BA. It's a little slim at 141 pages, but it's good. Weist is a good writer. It's kind of unfair, really. She's an outrageously articulate speaker, an inspired artist, skilled techie (digital archivist), and super young.
The semi-autobiographical story is that of artist librarian Audrey Reed's sexual and bibliographic adventures in Rochester, Minnesota, where she goes to escape sexual, romantic and other demons in NYC. It's an erotic romance novel with enough true-to-life library details to make it doubly pornful to people of my persuasion. As erotica/romance the strongest elements aren't the plot or even highly believable character development, for me the compelling parts are the library details and deft language.
Quotations:
At times it was clear to Audrey that the Dewey Decimal system had subtly transformed her life approach. Her belongings were so perfectly classified and categorized by some subconscious information science system that the entire house had come together in the matter of a morning. The items in the last room she was tackling, the kitchen, were now almost completely organized by potential usage. Multi-purpose tools like the blender were centrally shelved between breakfast implements and cocktail hour accessories, a cross-reference between the smoothie and the piña-colada.
reviewdate:
Apr 10 2010
isn:
987-0-6151-7677-2
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free:
Drupal Kitchen--hands on workshop
Co-presenter:
Event:
Computers in Libraries, 2010
Support a drunken hippie librarian on Etsy
Librarian Alexandra Crosier, who created the helpy and newsful Shelved @ NYC blog has now applied her talents to gourmet granola. Currently available in four flavors, each Granola Lab product description advises what beer goes best with the granola flavor. I suspect a popular item will be the one with coffee as an ingredient, but I'm more likely to try Get Gingersnapping for its calcium rich molasses or a veganified Cranberry-Cashew.
Nb: I am not actually implying or inferring that Alex is a drunken hippie. I am amusing myself however imaging her and her roommate testing granola/beer combinations long into the bleary night.
free:
April to do list
Now that library instruction season is winding down, many of my fellow reference and instruction peeps are breathing a sigh of relief and getting back to other projects. However I've got a few events to get through before I can give my full attention to weeding the reference collection, writing annual report documents, and cataloging zines like a mofo. Oh, and finishing settling into my new apartment!
Since when asked questions like "What are you up to these days?" I'm unlikely to give much of a response, here's what I'm up to for April...
free:
In the Men's House: an Inside Account of Life in the Army by one of West Point's First Female Graduates
You know I like to read memoirs, and although I'm personally not too keen on the military, perhaps because it's so foreign to me, I'm really interested in what life is like for a woman in the army. Unfortunately this book isn't great at revealing the author's personal experience. Her ability to convey them was possibly affected by her West Point training and subsequent need to maintain a military posture. It's still not a bad read, and its perspective on feminism in the army is well worth exploring.
Quotations:
Part of the irony of our experience was that the women who went to West Point became feminists in deed, even if they rejected feminism in name. We were aggressive, independent, and ambitious; we were not radicals, we weren't challenging authority--but we were fighting inequity. [The book was published in 1990, in case you're wondering.]
reviewdate:
Apr 5 2010
isn:
0-671-67312-2