Mini news round-up

How long has it been since I've done one of these? Sorry, kids!

• Eek! I spoke too soon in that post last week. Rushdie is speaking in India this week; so far no death threats.
• Our new CEO is profiled by David at the Citizen
• the BAnQ has a new website for local history p0rn
• I'm reading the Orange prize longlist - what are you reading?
• Battledecks (here - pick your poison) - I'm doing it in Montreal in May (scroll down and check sidebar under special events) - am I crazy? Don't answer that.
  

Newsy news!

Where does the day go?

• British authorities giveth: 'Super library' in Southwark opens its doors: this inverted pyramid is opening in London, but has the word Canada in its name!
  
• British authorities taketh away: More trouble for Edzell Library patrons - "Rural book-lovers have branded an Angus Council mobile library ''decrepit'' after revealing they face being without a service until January 9," and "some local residents [are] feeling unfairly treated" - um, obvs.
• Alert the media: there is a crisis in literary criticism!
• Stop workplace bullies (OK, this article is about women being treated unfairly by men, in general, but there are some workplace examples and this entire discourse is often internalised by other women also!) - thanks to Cait for the link.
  

News round-up

• "A reader's guide to Manhattan," by Christopher Reynolds, from the Montreal Gazette
  "So, old-fashioned book people, hit literary Manhattan soon and hard. Even if you have only three days, as I did earlier this year, you can squeeze in an eight-stop tour, complete with thinking, drinking, Bibles, tote bags and a certain pair of municipal mascots. Here’s how my circuit went..."
• Rohinton Mistry has won the of the $50,000 Neustadt International Prize for Literature
• Dinosaur vs. the Library, anyone? This is a very cute series.
  
• Otherwise, continue to sit on your hands or whatever until the Nobel is announced on Thursday! (place your bets here)
  

A dog's breakfast of links

Here are some other things I have been working on / excited by recently that I forgot to link to on this blog (yes, my pretties, I have a life outside here!):

• My interview on Hello Ottawa (thank you to the lovely Anne; picture at right taken by her... and that's to remind you what cooler weather is like!)
• An article I wrote last winter for CILIP's Library and Information History Group Newsletter entitled “The Public Library in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.”
• A listing in the Salem Press blog directory - whee!
• A somewhat schizophrenic post at the Digestive Librarians' Digest about restos opening food shops, consumerism, and local eating (good and bad).
• A somewhat less schizophrenic post at the Digestive Librarians' Digest about making my first real "dessert" for a Canada Day party.
  
• One of my lovely former students shadowed us for the day on Bookmobile!

Mid-week melee of news

And I started my day today by accidentally deleting a file I needed, and having to call IT to open a request to restore. Ya, so OPLers, if you delete from the S or H drives, it doesn't go to the Recycle Bin. Just saying.

I've been a bit swamped here: planning summer programs, hosting author visits (one down, 2 to go, including local author Paul Glennon!) and LANCR events, arranging stuff to do during our library's system downtime during migration to a new version of our ILS, doing class visits and storytimes, working Sunday overtime, helping my mum buy a new PC, training for an upcoming running event, and more.

Meanwhile, I just finished Savage lands by Clare Clark (on the Orange longlist; shortlist announced yesterday) - I liked it, but definitely didn't love it. It was certainly steeped in its setting, and a solid historical novel, but nothing, to me, especially remarkable.

I'm now on to No fixed address by Aritha van Herk (based on a recommendation from fellow blogger, Maylin), which I am quite enjoying even though it is somewhat different from the type of thing I usually read (more illuminating thoughts forthcoming). My lunchtime book is Straight Man, by Richard Russo, which is also somewhat different in tone from my usual pick, but interesting.

Anyway, news. That's what I started out talking about, didn't I? With no futher ado:

• Britain's best independent bookshops: Bath, London, Much Wenlock, Alnwick, Ely (shout out to ancestral homelands!), Wigtown, Liverpool, and Hay-on-Wye (of course).
• Penguin Launches Digital Initiative to Provide Free Books to Kids: says Mark Nieker, Pearson Foundation president, "For each book read online at www.wegivebooks.org, the Pearson Foundation--working together with a growing list of great non-profit organizations--will donate a brand new hardcover or paperback book to a child in need."
• Performance reviews demoralise your staff, apparently - so says a new book. Huh. You know what demoralised me more? Working somewhere for 8 yrs and not having a single performance review. I think it's more about how they are done; the above article says that they are commonly used to intimidate employees.... Ours actually are a dialogue, which is what the author of the book recommends.
  

Smorgasbord Saturday

OK, well, it was Smorgasbord Saturday, but ye olde "save as draft" feature got to me. Here it is, as slightly stale smorgasbord!

• The Magic of the Library - A Fun Presentation of The University of Bergen Library: wonderful 3 minute YouTube video giving a tour of the library's holdings, focusing on print and historical material. Best moments: the grab for the Dickens quill pen (realia!), the bookshelves closing in on Ole, and the ending (merci à le bibliothécaire errant pour le lien).


• Book trailers and where to find them: I had an OPLA RA committee meeting yesterday, and we were talking about trailers (often made by publishers, but more and more librarians and library


• I want to try this!!
  
  
• My friend Jean writes some fiction...
  
  
• NPW writes thoughtfully and truthfully about how I feel most days at Rideau Branch.
  
  
• Something about the phrase "a palazzo of human thought" smells funny to me.... *snort*.
  
  

Post-conference

I know, I know. I am working on those Day 2, 3 and 4 posts. Really. Just cut me some slack, since I woke up this morning (awoken the first time by an important phone call that I missed, and the second time by another long-distance ring that I scrambled to answer, thinking it was Important calling back, but it was a telemarketer...) feeling like my body is a crusty old elastic band. The kind you find all hardened and gross in the back of the desk drawer at work. So I'm going for a massage first.

Taking today, tomorrow and Thursday off was the smartest thing I've done in a long time, let me tell you.

Meanwhile, I wrangled some news for you. You can thank me later.

• Canadian poet and novelist Paul Quarrington has lung cancer. Think of him/pray for him/creatively visualise, please.


• Twitter research: "Men have 15% more followers than women. Men also have more reciprocated relationships, in which two users follow each other. This "follower split" suggests that women are driven less by followers than men, or have more stringent thresholds for reciprocating relationships." Hmm.


• Iceberg theory, part 2,458: There are lots of things you don't know about people, even colleagues.

Linking to George, Ninja extraordinaire, above, reminded me of a moment in the Q&A after my talk on Sunday, so I will share that one snippet for now, with the promise of more conference news soon. Someone asked "If you could choose just one blog to follow out of all those you mentioned this afternoon, which would it be?" and went on to say she knew that would be difficult, etc. I immediately replied, no hesitation, Bookninja. It was like that moment in Roman Holiday, my favourite movie ever, when a reporter in a scrum asks Princess Ann which city she liked best on her European tour, and she (ok, after trying to be nice and say each had their own charms, she catches herself and) draws herself up to full regal height and says, "Rome." 'Cause that's just the way it is.

Monday news: readers' guides, movie buzz for Little Bee, and Gatsby as ballet

I kid you not:

• BalletMet Columbus's world premiere of The Great Gatsby opened last Friday!


• Nicole Kidman bids on Little Bee film rights!!! Also, there is an online reading guide out for Little Bee here.


• There is a new edition of the seminal African novel, Things Fall Apart, complete with online reading guide. If you haven't read this book, get off the Internet and go pick it up right now. Maybe read this, this and this first.

Friday news: literature in public spaces, book-lending on London's Tube, and did you know libraries change lives?

I've been bad this week - again. I'm finding it pretty much takes all my energy these days to keep my head above water at work, although I'm hoping that will settle down in the next few weeks. I've also been feeling really tired, but hey, this blog is SO not going to turn into a depressing litany of health complaints, so I'm shutting it now.

Aside from working, reading, and running, I haven't been up to much, but here are some stories that have moved me or inspired me this week:

• Project Bookmark Canada: literature in public spaces. I love that this is kinda like a heritage plaque for literary scenes!


• Derek Weiler, RIP. I can't even add anything to this, because I'm sad. What can I possibly say that does this tragedy justice?


• Hey, can I read a free novel instead of that crappy Metro mag, please? Best line: "Everyone enjoys reading a nice story rather than about a useless celebrity that no-one really cares about too much."


• CILIP Libraries Change Lives Award Shortlist: Sustainable services and support for families of children with Autistic Spectrum Disorders (Leeds), The Edinburgh Reading Champion Project, and the Six Book Challenge (The Reading Agency/Costa Coffee).

News-tastic Saturday!

• The nominations for the 2009 Joe Shuster Awards are in! Hooray for Mariko Tamaki (nominated in the writer category) and both Conundrum Press and Drawn & Quarterly (nominted in the publisher category).


• Touching review of a new book about Margaret More, daughter of Sir Thomas.


• Terrifying Nixon-era children's books. Heh, heh. Highlights include page 4 of this little gem. The illustrations are actually quite charming! Blogger comments are the best part.

Enjoy your weekend! I'll be scavenging for maple candy at Canada's only urban cabane à sucre!

Monday hits me full force in the face....

With both good news and bad news:

• Are you a page turner, slow worm, serial shelver, or double booker?


• Guest blog post by Lisa Lutz


• Plath's son kills himself (how absolutely tragic)

Fun things I've been reading this morning

Well, mostly I've been consuming various cups of coffee and reading The Case of the Peculiar Pink Fan: An Enola Holmes Mystery, but also...

• A lovely sketch of Shakespeare and Company (been there! But I feel left out now, because George didn't throw a book down onto my head...) by Jeanette Winterson. "We sell books for a living, but it's the books that are our life," says Sylvia Whitman. Hear, hear.


• Not sure how I feel about it, but the Living Library idea is coming to Canada. I think it makes me nervous because it's oddly fetishistic. Also, are we really that bloody ignorant and sheltered that we need to formally "check out" a human being? If I want to learn about a certain subculture, I find a way to get into it: via books, culture, events, museums, etc. Oh well, whatever works, I guess.


• My friend, author Chris Cheave, over-caffeinates himself in Seattle, and films a seagull trying to break into his hotel room. I think I'd be even more of a mess if I was on a book tour (I don't always travel well) so I sympathise. Also, he's just hilarious.

Monday news!

Before I collapse back into bed with my Sac magique, here's some stuff I've been reading (on the laptop, in bed, surrounded by Kleenex - wait, that's probably more info than you wanted...):

• Server craps out on several small public libraries in Quebec, closing their doors temporarily


• Stop hanging on to that "Get out of jail free!" card from your Monopoly board! All you have to do is join a book club!


• Four stars, and "a new power," for Diaz and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, from The Independent. If you haven't read it yet, hurry up.

Friday: news round-up, then sleeeeep

I've been a bad blogger this week, neglecting you all since last Friday. I wish I could say I was being productive (well, I guess I was... just not here...) or that I was on a fab vacation like refinfo. Alas, no. I had an exhausting weekend, after a really crazy week and after catching a nasty cold. Prescription was: Advil, juice, and bed all day Saturday. I spent this week getting back in gear, and representing my employer with my great colleague BookPusher @ the FIS Job Fair. As always, the job fair rocked, thanks in large part to the amazing job that Meg and her colleagues did putting it together.

Now, my pretties, as a reward for following here, I give you .... a random Friday news round-up:

• Join the Coalition to Keep Canadian Heritage Support for Literary and Arts Magazines


• Why I'm a Slumdog fan, from the wonderful blog of Mitali Perkins (thx to Allison for telling me about this blog!)


• Just when you thought it was all puppies and rainbows: "Three-quarters of parents too busy to read bedtime stories!" AAAAHHH! To make it worse, "only three per cent of fathers now find the time to read to the kids compared to 89 per cent of mothers." SIGH.


• A little treat for surviving item #3 above: Spice of life: How writers evoke the past through food (nod to Hilary and Bec! Thinking of you with this post!)


• Complaining about the wet cold chez vous? My friend French Panic will set you straight, in print and in video, too!


• The Spanish National Library throws party via Facebook invites. Brave new world, folks!

As promised above, I am now off to score some dinner - I'm thinking cozy bar with wingback chairs - and then sleep. I'll be curling up with this.