Sunday, June 29, 2008

Greatest DIY Booklamp EVER!

I have been meaning to post about this since the first week I started this blog.

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Visit my source for instructions

For those of you following or interested in the progress of how many books I'm reading this year:
Animal Farm
George Orwell

Metamorphisis
Franz Kafka

Excuse me But I was Next
Peggy Post

Before You Say I Do
Todd Outcault

What I Wish I'd Known Before I got Married
Kay Coles James

12 Books that Changed the World
Melvyn Bragg

The Odyssey
Homer

Bibliotopia
Steven Gilbrar

In the Know
Nancy MacDonnell

The Omnivores Dilemna
Michael Pollan

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

College Bound Reading List

In case any of my readers are college bound - we are half-way through summer. So if you haven't been reading (SHAME ON YOU!!!!) Perhaps it's time you picked up one, or two, or fourteen of these college bound reads:

Anderson, Sherwood
Winesburg, Ohio

Baldwin, James
Go Tell It On the Mountain

Bellamy, Edward
Looking Backward: 2000-1887

Bradbury, Ray
Fahrenheit 451

Cather, Willa
My Antonia

Chopin, Kate
The Awakening

Cormier, Robert
The Chocolate War

Crane, Stephen
The Red Badge of Courage

Dorris, Michael
A Yellow Raft in Blue Water

Ellison, Ralph
Invisible Man

Faulkner, William
As I Lay Dying

Fitzgerald, F. Scott
The Great Gatsby

Gaines, Ernest
The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman

Hawthorne, Nathaniel
The Scarlet Letter

Heller, Joseph
Catch-22

Hemingway, Ernest
A Farewell to Arms

Hurston, Zora Neale
Their Eyes Were Watching God

Kesey, Ken
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Lee, Harper
To Kill a Mockingbird

London, Jack
Call of the Wild

McCullers, Carson
The Member of the Wedding

Melville, Herman
Moby-Dick

Morrison, Toni
Sula

Parks, Gordon
The Learning Tree

Plath, Sylvia
The Bell Jar

Poe, Edgar Allan
Great Tales and Poems

Salinger, J.D.
The Catcher in the Rye

Sinclair, Upton
The Jungle

Steinbeck, John
The Grapes of Wrath

Stowe, Harriet Beecher
Uncle Tom's Cabin

Twain, Mark
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

For more summer reads go to my source for this particular list

NOW GET THEE TO A LIBRARY OR YE OLDE BOOKSTORE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Want to Date a Librarian?

For those of you wondering what the do's and don't of picking up a librarian are:

Ever hear of the Librarian Fetish?

The tightly buttoned-up attire, the perma-scowl, the hair in the bun. And the cateyes. There's just something about those specs.

Nobody can be so repressed all the time, can they? Hence the genesis of the fetish: anybody that repressed must be equally wild behind the scenes, or so the fantasy goes.

Well then, for all you people out there who suffer the Librarian Fetish and dream of what happens when the bun comes down ...

... this is the post for you.

How To Pick Up A Librarian

Don't try to pick them up in the library. Big no-no. Most are so focussed on the heavy workload of checkins/checkouts, reorganizing books in return carts, and reading Hollywood gossip online, that they more than likely won't recognize what it is you are trying to do.

Do get yourself over to an off-site librarian hangout. Skip the local bars, you won't find any librarians there. The surplus of exposed cleavage which has made the club scene famous tends to intimidate the buttoned-up librarian types. Instead, head to a Librarian Bar ... otherwise known as a bookstore with a Starbucks inside.

Don't try the usual pickup lines. If you've ever been in a library, you will know that librarians generally do not care about their outward appearance and make minimal effort to look pretty. Ergo, any lines formulated around the concept of their physical appearance will go relatively unnoticed.

Do compliment their tastes, be it the books they have in hand, or the equisite detail on the rims of their cateye spectacles. But be warned: librarians are behind the times and still see themselves as the gatekeepers of the world's information access, Internet be damned. By extension, they love knowledgable people. If you don't know your books, your MARC, or your Hollywood gossip, better luck next time, pal.

Don't be "all that". Librarians don't care how much money you make, largely because we don't make enough to really care about it ourselves. That and a large percentage of librarians live inside the Great Bubble of Altruism, believing in what they do above all else. In their minds, your six-figure Executive VP CEO-track position is nothing compared to their for-the-betterment-of-society responsibilities.

Do speak highly of as many non-profit organizations as you can, especially those centred around literacy and children's education. If you drop the props at the right time, and in the right amount, you will see that bun begin to slip.

Don't mention how much you love the convenience of the Internet, or the thought of a paperless (and therefore bookless) society. In fact, if your job is based around making information more accessible to the average person (rendering librarians redundant in the process), you may as well head home now and start looking for a new fetish.

Do mention your strong hatred of Everything Google, even if this is a flat-out lie. Hey, we all lie when we're trying to pick up anyway, so what's the difference? For some odd reason, librarians get really excited whenever something bad is said about Google. It's the librarian's equivalent to Spanish Fly. Seriously.

Don't mention the overdues you have at your library, or the time you were kicked out for screaming at staff over the $2 per day DVD fines. This should go without saying.

Do speak in code, wherever possible. In other words, learn a little LC or Dewey, same as you would learn a little French if you were going to Quebec with the intention of picking up. If you can manage to successfully work a little 821.008 in there, you're golden, baby.

A final tip:
If you look like Johnny Depp, even just a little bit, you won't have to do a thing; the librarians will come to you. This is a truism across the board. Don't ask me why - it just is.

So if you find yourself feeling that Bunhead itch, hit up your nearest bookstore/coffeeshop mashup, stake out the Reference, Mystery, and Romance aisles, and get ready to rip that juke joint in two.

Use these tips properly, and you will see for yourself the freaky-deeky hiding beneath the bun.

Source

Monday, June 23, 2008

The Name of This Book is A Secret

I am terribly sorry I have not been posting much. I am in the throws of wedding planning with no help from anyone else and the date is August 2nd - so much to do!

Now on to my post.

Recently I finished the book Middlesex. I must say I am not entirely sure what the obsession with this book is. I liked the 2nd half much better than the 1st. My favorite portion was when the notion of the girl crush is brought to light.

The girl-crush is something so many females get and none admit to. Over at the Clothes Horse the (shared by many including yours truly) admission of a girl crush on someone a few of us have come to know as "Louise the Redhead."

There are other things people choose not to regularly admit to - secret reads if you will. Trashionista not unlike the Clothes Horse has the cohones to admit her secret read.

A secret read can be defined as something "worthy and fashionable" when instead they are enjoying a "children's book or a bodice-ripping romance".

My own personal secret read will be revealed once I figure out what on earth it may be.

And as a personal comment to le trashionista I say. We still love you over here no matter what you read shuga.

Source

Thursday, June 19, 2008

I'm Late in Learning About This - Perhaps You Are As Well

VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- This isn't the typical whispering you might expect to hear at a library.

Vienna's City Hall has launched a "sex hotline" to raise money for the capital's main public library, officials said Tuesday.

It's unusual, but it's not particularly raunchy: Callers pay 39 euro cents (53 U.S. cents) a minute to listen to an actress read breathless passages from erotica dating to the Victorian era.

City Hall set up the hotline earlier this month to help the library raise cash for planned remodeling and expansion, Austrian media reported.

Anne Bennent, a famous Austrian stage and film star, reads passages from the Vienna library's collection of 1,200 works of erotic fiction from the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, the library said.

Officials said the hotline would be operational through May 31.

Source

Charitable Donations

Public Library for UO Darfur Heart Tee from Urban Outfitters

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Designed exclusively for Urban Outfitters by Public Library, the graphic on this t-shirt is hoped to raise awareness of the crisis in the Darfur region of Sudan. In washed-soft and faded jersey; Cut with a v-neck and finished with a graphic message at the front. $5 from the purchase of every tee goes to savedarfur.org. Exclusive to Urban Outfitters. Made in the USA. Machine wash.
$28

When searching the word "library" on urban outfitters website five items will come up.None of them are to my particular taste but I felt that it was worth the mention.

For those of you out there who have a drawer full of old glasses you may consider donating them to the Give the Gift of Sight Foundation. Your old glasses will go to those who need them in developing countries.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

The Sun Also Rises

I have no idea if this is meant to be how it looks to a bibliophile - I also don't care.

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Available from Shopbop.com for $98

Monday, June 16, 2008

Notebook Pride

The computer may nearly be fixed. There are still some things to work on but I wanted to check back in on you dear readers.

In an earlier post I mentioned Penguins deck chairs. It would seem they are offering their own moleskin-esque notebooks with favourite titles on them.

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Aside from you and I here is who else has just got to have it: Source

Recently Finished:
The Magicians Nephew
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

C.S. Lewis

Poems
Sylvia Plath

Eclipse
Stephenie Meyers

What Would Audrey Do?
Pamela Clarke Keogh

Don't Be That Girl
Travis Stork

Unfortunate English
William Brohaugh

The Gilded Tongue
Rod Evans

Lost in Austen
Emma Campell Webster

Eat This, Not That
David Zinczenko

Where the Wild Things Are

Maurice Sendack

Saturday, June 7, 2008

Computer Fall Down Go Boom

I have run into some electrical issues at my house. It seems everything on the upper floor is on the same breaker. The power cuts out frequently. My computer has also been possessed by the spirit of annoyance - and is not working properly. On top of all this I need to buckle down and do more wedding planning since the date this August. I will do my best to keep things posted from my school in the meantime.

Recently Finished:
TinTin in America
TinTin in the Congo

Herge

The Chocolate War
Robert Cormier

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Holy Librarian Batman!

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Writers Rooms - A View

I've never understood the fascination some seem to have with looking into peoples medicine cabinets. However, when it comes to certain writers I could see why you'd feel the urge to sneak a peak.

At the moment I haven't dug out the contents of writers medicine cabinets for you (but we never know what the future will hold.) But as an extension of when I posted about authors bedrooms and desks I've grabbed a few (writing spaces) out of a deliciously lengthy list of writers to choose from.

Colm Tóibín
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George Bernard Shaw
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Anne Enright
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Margaret Forster
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David Harsent
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Adam Philips
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Jung Chang
Check out the sculpture over the bookcase
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Craig Raine
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Adam Thirlwell
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Hanif Kureishi
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Will Self
I LOVE the wall of post-it's.
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And I saved the best for last.

Beryl Bainbridge
Excuse my while I drown in my own droooooolllll . . . .
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Source

Recently Finished:
Go Ask Alice
Anonymous

The Metamorphisis
Franz Kafka

The Little Prince
Antoine de Saint-Exupery

The Yellow Wallpaper
Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Bunnicula
Howliday Inn
The Celery Stalks at Midnight

Deborah Howe

A Wrinkle in Time
Madeleine L'Engle

New Moon
Stephenie Meyer

The Adventures of TinTin: Land of the Soviets
Herge

These will now bring the total number of books I am certain have been read this year to . . . 91

Monday, June 2, 2008

My Pen Name is Trudy Alverston What's Yours?

While rooting around on the net researching grave sites for authors as well as literary destinations I found this, a pen name generator courtesy of Ohio reading road trip.

Here are a few names that came up for me:
Trudy Alverston
Trudy Acostan
Twyla Attaway
Tailynn Audley

Another pen name generator
This one gives you options depending on what sort of writer you wish to be
This random name generator doesn't even require you type in a name. Just click the link.