New News Out of Africa: Uncovering Africa's Renaissance by Charlayne Hunter-Gault

"Death, disaster, disease, and despair" is the message of most newspaper and television reports from Africa. Journalist Charlayne Hunter-Gault of National Public Radio says that the media sells only an old easy-to-report story - typical sensationalism. While based on truth, for there are many problems yet to solve on the African continent, these reports miss the good news. There are strong signs of hope and improvement in Africa. She calls this "new news."

New News Out of Africa: Uncovering Africa's Renaissance is a collection of three essays by Hunter-Gault. In "South Africa, Then and Now" she tells her first-hand story of seeing the evils of apartheid dismantled, as Nelson Mandela was released from prison and became president, and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission held its hearings about the crimes of the apartheid era. The transition of government was swift but the economic development is slow. There are still many poor blacks in the country, which is now also suffering from an AIDS epidemic, but the author points to much progress that has been made. She sees South Africa as the rising power that will help the entire continent.

In "Baby Steps to Democracy" she tells of the end of the era of strong dictators in Africa. She describes the countries where elections have been held and the countries where this has not yet happened. Even in the lagging countries there are people risking their lives to oppose repressive regimes.

In "Reporting Renaissance" she disputes "The Hopeless Continent," a well-read article in The Economist in 2000. She also tells about the role that African and western journalists have in encouraging good government and development.

Reference librarians will be glad to see this small book has a detailed index and notes citing many sources. Recommended for readers interested in African affairs.

Look What I Found

Look What I Found
Originally uploaded by ricklibrarian.

When things are right in front of you every day, you sometimes fail to notice. I was rebooting one of our catalog PCs and noticed this mouse. We have not bought a Compaq computer since 1997. This mouse must be from one of those old computers. As many mice as I have replaced over the years, I am surprised to see this old one still in use. Not only that, but I noticed the catalog to the right had an identical mouse. We get our money's worth out of equipment at the library.

Benjamin Franklin on Electricity and Fowl

Benjamin Franklin in Royal Society Archive
Originally uploaded by ricklibrarian.

The Royal Society is making its 340 year archive available free on the web through until mid-November. So if you want to see some historically important scientific papers without paying, do so soon.

I liked this bit about Benjamin Franklin that ran in the Philosophical Transactions from the Society in either 1751 or 1752. The letter s is often replaced with an f. The topic is also pretty strange. So little was known about electricity in the middle of the 18th century that it was a novel idea that chickens and turkey could be killed through electrocution. The big turkey held up for a while, but when Franklin increased the juice, he failed to recover.

Faraday, Newton, Watson and Crick, and Hawking have all been published by the Royal Society. Take a look.

Wordplay: The After Hours Film Society Presentation with Appearance by the Director and Producer

Last night was a very special night at the Tivoli Theater in Downers Grove, Illinois. The After Hours Film Society showed Wordplay, a documentary about crossword puzzles, their creators, and their fans. After the film the director Patrick Creadon and producer Christine O"Malley answered questions from the audience about the making of the film and about the world of crossword puzzles.

Wordplay begins in the office of enigmatologist Will Shortz, who is the editor of the New York Times crossword puzzle and who presents puzzles every Sunday on National Public Radio's Sunday Edition. He tells about his love of word puzzles, his education, and his career. He also tells about founding the annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament in Stamford, Connecticut.

In the first half of the film we meets the country's best puzzle minds and some celebrities who love to do the daily NYT puzzles, including Jon Stewart, the Indigo Girls, Ken Burns, and former president Bill Clinton. Merl Reagle shows us how crosswords are created, and Shortz tells us the story of the 1996 NYT Election Day Crossword.

The second half of the movie takes us to the 2005 tournament, where the contestants do six puzzles on Saturday and a final big puzzle on Sunday. The players with the top three scores then compete for the championship on stage, using erasable markers on large crossword boards. With a former champ, a frequent contender, and a young whiz on the stage, the drama is intense.

After the film Creadon and O'Malley answered questions for 45 minutes. They reported that the film, which took the nine months to shoot and edit, had just become 25th on the top grossing documentaries list. They told about the process of presenting and selling the film to distributors at the Sundance Film Festival, and the technical work and licensing that had to be done then to get it to theaters. They also told about shooting the scenes with Jon Stewart and Bill Clinton. Creadon did 90 percent of the camera work himself but extra cameras were brought in for the tournament.

Creadon also reported that the DVD will be on sale November 7, 2006. In addition to the 84 minute film will be 85 minutes of special features, including out takes, a report from Sundance, profiles of five puzzle makers, a music video, and more about Will Shortz. He also said that there is Wordplay: The Official Companion Book, which includes all the puzzles used in the film, more about puzzle making and advice for solving crosswords.

As I left the Tivoli, I met a Thomas Ford library user. She said, "We have to get that DVD for the Library!" I agree.

I'm Bad with Names and Hoping to Improve

One of my shortcomings (and there are many) is that I have trouble remembering the names of people that I have met. There are many library users who call me by my first name*, but I am unable to pull theirs from the recesses of my brain. After years of handling their library cards, taking their phone calls, and filling out reserve forms in their names, I still draw a blank when they approach the reference desk. They even greet me at restaurants and movie theaters. I feel awkward.

Our library clients do have an advantage in that I am wearing a name tag when I am on duty. I have given out quite a few of my business cards in the past, and they see my name in the newsletter and on the website. My name is out there to see.

My problem goes beyond the building. There are other librarians whose names escape me when I see them at meetings and conferences. If you are one of them, I apologize. I should remember. I am glad when you wear a name tag that I can read. This summer at the conference in New Orleans, most people wore their name tags on lanyards that hung down around their belly buttons. They were almost impossible to read without stooping. I added looking awkward to feeling awkward.

Maybe there is hope for me. I used to have very good recall of major league baseball players' names. I could open a package of baseball cards and identify most of the players without looking at their names. I could do this because I had seen many of their previous cards and read about them constantly in the newspaper. I had seen many of them on television. I heard their names repeated on the radio. The key to my recall was repetition and obsession.

I do not think I can ask clients for their photos so I can create trading cards. I think that is a very bad idea.

So, how can I improve my library user name recall? My strength is my ability to create and use reference tools. Is there a way to draw from this strength? Can I create An Index to Readers or A Spotter's Guide to Library Clients? It would be a pretty obsessive thing to do.

Does anyone have suggestions? Perhaps others have this same concern.

*I also have several library users who call me Eric. I think they blended Aaron and Rick into Eric. There is also another who insists on calling me Nick.

Walk, Don't Run: A Film Discussion at the Thomas Ford Memorial Library

We are starting our fifth year of film discussions at the Thomas Ford Memorial Library. Our every-other-Friday-night presentation has been one of our easiest and most successful programs. While the number of participants on any given night can vary from three to thirty, we almost always have a good discussion.

This week we showed Walk, Don't Run (no Worldcat DVD holdings), a comedy set at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. I had chosen the film as a change of pace from Munich, which we presented two weeks ago, and as a nod to Tokyo Olympiad, our first film four years ago. Walk, Don't Run stars Cary Grant (in his very last movie) as a British industrialist in Tokyo to order electronic gadgets from an innovative Japanese company. Jim Hutton plays an American architect and amateur athlete participating in the games. Neither has a place to stay, but they find Samantha Eggar needs flatmates. They are not what she had in mind.

The plot develops rather slowly at first and relies on a number of common comic devices. While there were several very funny scenes and much audience laughter, I began to worry that we would have nothing to discuss.

As soon as the movie ended and we turned up the lights, one of the regulars said, "That was the second worst movie I have ever seen!" Of course, everyone wanted to know what was first. Then everyone who had enjoyed the movie (most of the group) started telling what they liked. Then we talked about old coffee pots, transistor radios, Cary Grant, British sex-farce comedies, post-war Tokyo, and whether speed walking was a real Olympic event. It was a lively discussion. I need not have worried.

Aaron Schmidt started our film series, which has shown a lot of indie and foreign films, a tradition we intend to uphold. Our new librarian Kristin Schar is taking over the planning and presentation of the series. The regulars took to her and most will be coming back in two weeks to see Yesterday, a beautiful film about AIDs in South Africa. There will be much to discuss.

Love among the Chickens by P. G. Wodehouse

I would like to argue that the USDA-approved food pyramid should include a modest helping of angel food cake topped with chocolate sauce and fresh raspberries, but I will not. Instead, I will pose that personal reading plans should include a serving of P. G. Wodehouse.

I just finished listening to Love among the Chickens by the 125 year old author. Oh, Wodehouse is deceased, but his work is still as fresh and completely silly as it was 100 years ago, and much of his work is still in print. Love among the Chickens was first published in 1906 and revised in 1921, but its story is timeless. Readers will not know if it is 1900 or 1930 or 1960. English countryside and village life are eternal, at least in comic literature.

In Love among the Chickens, Wodehouse introduces the character Stanley Featherstonehough Ukridge, who reappears in a short story called "Ukridge" in 1924. He is a large, loud, outlandish friend of the author of The Manouevres of Arthur, Jeremy Garnet, who does not have the sense to say "no" to a proposal to start a chicken farm without any capital expenditures. Ukridge argues that they can order chickens, raise chicks, and harvest eggs until creditors demand payment for the original chickens. At that point they can return the breeder chickens, and no one will object. They will even just borrow the farm. Ukridge and Garnet will have pure profit with little work. It is foolproof. Garnet plans to spend most of his time playing golf. Of course, the scheme does not work as planned.

As in many Wodehouse novels, a young English man falls madly in love with a beautiful and sweet young English woman with a father who objects strenuously. I often laughed out loud.

Librarians should make sure they still have a supple of Wodehouse in their collections. Unfortunately they will have trouble adding this title in print, as Baker and Taylor has no copies. The audiobook is available from the publisher.

Wodehouse, P. G. Love among the Chickens. 4 compact discs. North Kingstown, Rhode Island: BBC Audiobooks America, 2005. ISBN 0792738217

Brief Encounters with Che Guevara by Ben Fountain

Ben Fountain, the author of the stories in the collection Brief Encounters with Che Guevara, has been to Haiti about 30 times since 1991. I would have guessed as much, as several of his stories are set in the poverty-stricken country. His stories feel authentic, and the reader feels the humidity and smells the refuse. According to an interview, his wife has drawn the line. She will not let him go to Colombia, Burma (Myanmar), and Sierra Leone. Still, he has found how to write excellent stories about these dangerous places.

The book starts with a story titled "Near-Extinct Birds of the Central Cordillera." Young ornithologist John Blair (called by the MURC rebels who kidnap him as "JoanBlair") uses the time of his captivity to study the crimson-capped parrot, also know as Felty's crimson. One underage rebel guarding Blair becomes his research assistant and shimmies up trees to count nests and eggs. When an investment guru from Wall Street shows up to negotiate a forestry contract with Comandante Alberto, members of the entourage decline to ask for the American's release, but they do offer the hungry Blair a supply of power bars. Issues of justice and ecology do not matter to anyone other than Blair. The end is surprising.

"Asian Tiger" is the fourth story. Sonny Grous from Linwood, Texas, who was once a promising golfer on the PGA tour, wins the Myanmar Peace and enlightenment Leadership Cup and becomes the golf instructor for country's generals. Merrill Hayden, an oil lease broker, pairs with Sonny to throw games to generals Tun and Zaw, much to the delight of Kel McClure from the U. S. Embassy, who tells him that a State Department study suggests golf will foster world peace. Needing money to send his girls to college, he agrees to chopper into a golf course development site in a combat zone. Sonny sees more than he wants to see.

In "The Lion's Mouth," Jill, a veteran of the Peace Corp and several assignments for NGOs, finds Sierra Leone really is really the worst of the worst. Working for World-Aid Ministries with women who have survived brutal amputations, she falls into an affair with a diamond smuggler. Needing to find funding for her project, she is tempted to become a criminal herself.

"Brief Encounters with Che Guevera" is a series of ministories written in the first person about a well-traveled American who keeps meeting individuals who associated with the long-dead rebel. As an old Haitian declines in health, the memoirist tries to reach him to tell him that Che's grave has been found, but it may be too late.

The final story is "Fantasy for Eleven Fingers." It is unlike all the other stories in that it is set in nineteenth century Europe (not the third world) and focuses on a young piano virtuoso with eleven fingers. Ethnic hatred derail her career. Perhaps the story is not so different from the other stories.

I hope Ben Fountain continues to write stories. He seems to be an expert in the field of American relations with the poorer countries of the world. Brief Encounters with Che Guevara should be in many public libraries.

Fountain, Ben. Brief Encounters with Che Guevara. New York: HarperCollins, 2006. ISBN 0060885580

The Chicago Tribune Reports on Google and Its Effort to Stay Ahead of Competitors

Chicago Tribune writers David Greising and John McCormick report on the inner working of Google in today's Chicago Tribune in an feature article entitled "Inside a Web Giant's Manic Search for Staying Power." Above the headline is "Gunning for Google." Google executives allowed Tribune staff to attend design meetings and interview Google staff in the Mountain View, California headquarters that is called Googleplex. The authors explain how the complex itself is a symbol, the reflection of a major company with clout and innovation; they also remind the readers the building was once owned by Silicon Graphics, a defunct company. Google is well aware of the symbolism. The article is on the front page of today's newspaper.

After telling how executive Marissa Mayer conducts design meetings (protecting the simplicity of the main page) and a brief history of the company, the authors spend 22 column inches discussing Google's response to the challenge of You Tube. A discussion of the 70-20-10 focus on core search-existing products-innovations follows; an internal audit by chief executive Eric Schmidt revealed that Google had lost focus and was spending only 60 per cent of its effort on the core search. The article ends with a description of the challenge of Microsoft Bird's Eye to Google Earth.

Readers who like ranking will like the tables showing what companies lead in popularity of their products.

Social Networking (rank and percent of visitors)
1. MySpace.com - 55.8
2. Classmates.com - 17.2
3. Facebook.com - 14.8
4. Windows Live Spaces - 9.8
18. Orkut (Google product) - 0.4

Video
1. You Tube - 34.0
2. MySpace Videos - 17.9
3. Google Videos - 13.5
4. MSN Video - 11.9
5. Yahoo Video - 5.9

Search
1. Google - 43.7
2. Yahoo - 28.8
3. Microsoft - 12.8
4. Time Warner Network - 5.9
5. Ask Network - 5.4

There are also tables for email and news services with the article, as well as a graph showing the rise in the price of Google stock.

There is a slide/audio presentation discussing the article on the Chicago Tribune website. In 3:47 seconds it makes some of the main points and shows many scenes inside Googleplex.

Tomorrow's Chicago Tribune will carry an article promoted as "The battle to be your search engine."

Uncommon Carriers by John McPhee

Look around your house, in the kitchen, and in your garage. Where does all your stuff come from? Who gets raw goods from the point of origin to the manufacturer and who moves finished goods to you? Think about all the stuff in the stores and for sale on the web. There must be many people involved in the delivery effort. In a series of essay in Uncommon Carriers, John McPhee writes about the out-of-the-public-eye people moving goods across the country.

McPhee's method of discovery is to invite himself on a trip. In Uncommon Carriers, he travels across the U.S. in the purple cab of a shiny silver tanker truck carrying hazmats (hazardous materials); up the Illinois River on a towboat pushing fifteen barges loaded with pig iron, steel coils, furnace coke, and fertilizer; with a truckload of lobsters from Nova Scotia to a holding facility outside the UPS hub in Louisville, Kentucky; and on a coal train from Kansas to Wyoming. He also visits a ship steering school in Port Revel, France, and he and his son-in-law recreate a canalboat trip taken by Henry David Thoreau and his brother John in 1839.

In the course of his travels, he works alongside many people: a fastidiously clean truck driver, student ship captains working on reduced scale models, barge hands killing time, UPS employees moving goods through a huge sorting center, and train engineers trying to deliver their trains on time. Because of their work they all have strange hours and federal regulations to meet. They sleep when they can, know where to eat, and often go days or weeks without seeing their families (if they have any).

Some readers may find some technical aspects of the book tedious. If you do, skim until the author describes people again. They have some surprising experiences and observations. He also includes interesting historical tidbits, such as the story of World War II submarines built in Wisconsin using the Illinois River in their trek to the Gulf of Mexico.

Anyone interested in corporate business should read "Out in the Sort," which tells how UPS has diversified its business and now fixes computers and maintains inventories for mail-order firms. The company also runs its own university for its employees.
Uncommon Carriers is a good read for anyone interested in American culture and labor issues.

McPhee, John. Uncommon Carriers. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006. ISBN 0374280398

The Perfect Mile: Three Athletes, One Goal, and Less Than Four Minutes to Achieve It by Neal Bascomb

The running of a four minute mile was once thought impossible, according to Neal Bascomb in his sports history The Perfect Mile. Some newspaper columnists and officials of amateur athletics organizations argued that the laws of physics would not allow a human to ever run that fast. Of course, their science was very bad.

As of 2004 when Bascomb published The Perfect Mile, over 1000 runners have broken the four minute barrier. Hicham El Guerrouj of Morocco is the current record-holder with his 3:43:13 time in a race in Rome in 1999. Few people remember when the four minute mile was newsworthy. With few people knowing the names Roger Bannister, John Landy, and Wes Santee, the author saw the opportunity to tell a great story that would keep readers to the end wondering the outcome.

Bascomb blends the stories of the three runners well, taking the readers from England to Kansas and to Australia to meet the men, and then to the 1952 Helsinki Olympics and the 1954 Empire Games in Vancouver. Added to the mix are the stories of the struggle between men who wanted to keep amateur athletics untouched by professionalism and the promoters who saw opportunities for careers and profits. Readers will also learn about the world of newspaper reporting and early history of televised sports.

The Perfect Mile is a heroic story that should appeal to men and women alike, as it is as much about character as it is sports. The audiobook read by Nelson Runger is especially good for listening while commuting.

Bascomb, Neal. The Perfect Mile: Three Athletes, One Goal, and Less Than Four Minutes to Achieve It. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004. ISBN 0618391126

12 compact discs. Prince Frederick, MD: Recorded Books, 2004. ISBN 1402583745

Thommy Ford in Googleland

Thommy Ford in Googleland
Originally uploaded by thomas ford memorial library.

Our collection of Thommy Ford Abroad photos on the Thomas Ford Memorial Library Flickr site is growing. Here I am in New Orleans. We have new photos from across the country and Europe. Click the photo to get to set so far.

Using Fee-Based Databases in a Virtual Reference Setting

Last week Jenny Levine of Shifted Librarian wrote about how disappointed she was by the answers given her by virtual reference recently. The virtual librarians gathered their data from free Internet resources via Google and Yahoo. Jenny had already done that. She was hoping for better information culled from fee-based databases.

Also last week Ross Singer of Dilettante's Ball wrote about the similarities between librarians and travel agents. Within his blog piece is a complaint about fee-based databases and how difficult it is to use them "for anything useful." I wish that he had been a little more specific, but I think he was referring to incompatibility with blogs, wikis, IM, and virtual reference.

I think these pieces go together.

I know I have had many bad experiences trying to pass database information through virtual reference. I always ask the client whether they received a readable page with the information they wanted. Often the answer is "no." They get no page at all or a page that asks them to sign onto a database service. I then resort to other means: pasting text into the chat box or email articles.

Another related issue is the availability of databases in the library community. Our virtual reference volunteers may come from large or small libraries and have a wealth or poverty of databases. The client never knows whether the luck of the draw will provide a librarian with optimal resources.

I am in a small library and do not have many databases to offer when I answer virtual reference requests. If Jenny had asked me her question, I might have disappointed her. I tend to use the free Internet resources and have what I think is a good rate of success. I use the resources that the client uses but I have more success in mining them. I pull books from the library and find answers if the client gives me time. I also do find a way to use the databases, but it is not easy.

I think we still have a lot of work to do to improve our library service in the virtual world.

The Congressman Who Loved Flaubert and Other Washington Stories by Ward Just

"I have always tried never to let people down without warning them." Senator Thomas Hayn in "Noone"

Our nation's capital in The Congressman Who Loved Flaubert and Other Washington Stories by Ward Just is filled with men and women who are disillusioned. A liberal Southern congressman co-sponsors legislation that he hopes will stall in committee. A foreign service expert is loaned to the CIA and can not regain his position in the State Department. A Pentagon aide regrets the Medal of Honor that he is awarded for leading his men into an ambush in Vietnam. A senator depends on the charms of his wife to sidetrack an investigative reporter. White House staff despises their replacements in the new administration. Everyone feels broken.

All of these stories were published in Atlantic Monthly in the early 1970s, but they still seem relevant. Color television is a luxury, everyone drinks martinis, and no one has a personal computer, but the political struggle is just the same. Long out of print, you will have to borrow this book from a public or college library.

Just, Ward. The Congressman Who Loved Flaubert and Other Washington Stories. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1973. There is no ISBN.

Impresario: The Life and Times of Ed Sullivan by James Maguire

Who was Ed Sullivan, the emcee of a variety show that aired on CBS television for twenty-three years? Baby boomers will certainly remember him as a rather stiff host who rarely did anything other than announce the acts and talk to celebrities. Without displaying any obvious talents, like singing, dancing, or acting, he was a fixture of early television. Why? In Impresario: The Life and Times of Ed Sullivan, James Maguire examines the man in the context of his culture.

Long before television, Sullivan was in the public eye, first as a sports reporter and columnist and then as an entertainment columnist. Working for a variety of newspapers in New York, he got to know many sports heroes and then most of the stars of Vaudeville, Broadway, early films, and early radio. He hung around restaurants and clubs nightly, even becoming friends with organized crime figures. Though his daily columns were always overshadowed by the work of Walter Winchell, he was sought out by important people to promote their acts, records, plays, or movies.

Sullivan became more involved in entertainment when he organized some variety reviews for charitable causes. He eventually decided to turn his talent at booking and producing into a profession, without ever giving up his newspaper column, which ran until he died. When CBS needed a variety show to compete with Milton Berle's Texaco Theater on NBC, Sullivan pitched his services to the company.

Maguire tells some surprising stories about Sullivan. As a younger man, Sullivan once worked for a socialist newspaper, giving a leftist perspective to sports reporting. He later supported blacklisting anyone who had been a communist.

Sullivan and Winchell had terrible jealousies and would stoop very low to hurt their opponents reputations. When Winchell was dying, Sullivan came to his aid.

Though Sullivan sometimes used ethnically prejudicial words in his columns, he regularly booked African-Americans acts on his Sunday night program, beginning with his second episode of Toast of the Town in 1948. He ignored the hate mail he received after shaking hands with Nat King Cole on national television.

Trying to prove he was more than a mere entertainer, Sullivan scooped CBS News by getting an interview with Fidel Castro in the wake of his victory in Cuba.

Impresario includes chapters on bookings of Elvis Presley and the Beatles. Bob Dylan once played the Sunday afternoon rehearsal but was cut from the show when he would not drop "Talking John Birch Society Blues" from his performance. The Rolling Stones washed their hair and altered their lyrics to make the show. The Doors made promises they did not keep.

The index which includes the names of people and performers Sullivan met throughout his long career is thirteen pages.

Impresario is a biography of a man full of contradictions. Readers of the book will also learn much about the history of American popular culture. The book is a long 306 pages of small print and narrow margins, but it worth the effort.

Maguire, James. Impresario: The Life and Times of Ed Sullivan. New York: Billboard Books, 2006. ISBN 0823079627

Poly Talk: A Library Interpreters Network

We received an interesting brochure sent by the Lincoln Trail Libraries System this week about Poly Talk. Poly Talk is a grant project set up to connect librarians in Illinois with a network of foreign language interpreters. According to the brochure (and repeated on the website), one in five people in Illinois speaks a language other than English in the home. That means that there is a great need, and also a great pool of possible interpreters.

The project relies on volunteers and on libraries who register to use the service. Libraries will contact the interpreters without revealing to the client the contact information. If I understand the idea correctly, both the librarian and the client will be on the phone with the interpreter to negotiate the question and find ways to help the non-English speaking client.

The website explains more than the brochure.

I register for our library, agreeing to terms and conditions including confidentiality provisions. When the account is approved, I should be able to see the list of interpreters. The website reports that there are 75 speaking a total of 25 to date. That sounds like a good start.

Pearl's Picks: Recommended Reading from Nancy Pearl

I learned last week from LISNews that a new Nancy Pearl readers' advisory service was debuting on the King County Library System website on September 1. It did as promised. The service is Pearl's Picks, and for early September she recommends twelve books. While most are new novels, she is recommending several older books, a couple of children's titles, and some nonfiction. According to the press release from King County, there will be a new list twice per month.

What King County readers will like are the short book reviews and links to place holds on the books. A King County library card number and a four digit PIN number are needed to complete the request process.

Librarians selecting and recommending books at their libraries can also use the lists. I have added three books to my shopping cart based on Nancy's list.

The press release states that other libraries are posting this content on their websites. Contact King County Library System if your library system is interested.

Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith by Anne LaMott

"Laughter is carbonated happiness." Anne Lamott

As the war continues, peace activist and Sunday school teacher Anne Lamott is finding it harder to love George W. Bush. She has other spiritual challenges: her son Sam is a teenager who does not want to go to church; their dog Lily has died; several of her friends have cancer; she has her mother's ashes in a closet; and she is asked to be a flower girl in a wedding. Her doctor has diagnosed that she is clinically sensitive and recommends that she avoid stimulating situations, but this not something she can do. Fortunately for us, she can write about all these issues.

Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith is a collection of twenty biographical essays written since Lamott's previous best seller Traveling Mercies. In these she often discusses the unfairness of life and the reasons for hope and celebrates the friends that help her face each day.

My favorite story tells about her church friend Ann who was born with a birth defect because her mother worked in a munitions factory during World War II. This woman bravely showed her deformed arm as part of her campaign to fight prejudice. Children were fascinated, wanting to touch the scars of the missing fingers. When Ann's death from cancer was imminent, she asked to be buried in a plain wooden coffin decorated by the children of the church. Lamott decided it was not a good idea to have children work directly on the coffin, so she had them create works of art that she and friends then attached to the coffin. Ann was able to admire a colorful coffin before she died.

In our politically divided country not everyone will like this book, which I find sad, for Lamott is trying to make the world a better place through humor and honesty. I recommend listening to Lamott read her book on CD to get the full effect.

Lamott, Anne. Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith. New York: Riverhead Books, 2005. ISBN 1573222992

5 compact discs. New York: Penguin Audio, 2005. ISBN 0143057340

Oranging of America and Other Stories by Max Apple

My memory serves me well. It has been over twenty years since I read The Oranging of America and Other Stories by Max Apple, and it is almost as good as I remember.

I first learned about the book in 1976 when it was reviewed in the New York Times Book Review. When the Austin Public Library got a copy, I read it, laughing at the funny stories and enjoying Apple's unconventional views. I recommended the book to friends, but I do not think any enjoyed it as much as I did. It was too bizarre for them.

I bought a copy of my own from the remainder table at a bookstore in Columbia, Missouri in the late 1970s, and I donated it to a library in suburan Chicago in the early 1980s when I was trying to reduce my possessions. Why hold onto a book when others could be reading it?

After reading a couple of short story collections last month, I started to think about my favorite short stories with the idea of making a list for the blog. I thought of The Oranging of America right away and looked at our shared library catalog. I was shocked to find that in the seventy plus libraries there was only one copy of the book. When I tried to reserve it, I found that copy was missing. Using the rules that we weed what is not borrowed, it had been removed from many collections. I understand why as I share the belief that small and medium-sized public libraries can only keep what is read. Still, I found it sad that one of my favorite books had disappeared from public remembering. I borrowed the book from an area college.

The gem of the collection is the first story, "The Oranging of America," a bit of fantasy posed as American folk legend. In this story, Apple tells about the aging Howard Johnson who tours the continental United States looking for locations for his orange-roofed restaurants and motels. For six months of the year, HJ is in his stretch Cadillac with his driver Otis and his secretary Millie driving the roads with vacationing families. When they need food and rest, they stop. If they find no services, they call New York and have HJ's son buy land. There is a refrigerator run off the car battery with a back-up generator filled with ice cream samples. No flavor is ever put into production unless Otis approves. The system has worked well, but the board of directors wants a change.

The second story is "Selling Out." Get-rich-quick investors studying stocks at the library may think this is an instructional story, but it is satire.

"Vegetable Love" tells about giving up meat for love, losing lots of weight, obsession, and the practice of law.

"Inside Norman Mailer" is the first of two stories set in the Astrodome. If you are going to duke it out with Mailer, you had better know literary trash talk.

It helps to read a bit of science to read "The Yogurt of Vasirin Kefirovsky." You do learn that yogurt = milk + time + heat. The astronomer wants to change the way we eat. You do not need teeth.

"Understanding Alvarado" is the first story I ever read with Fidel Castro on the baseball diamond. Can Fidel strike out the former major leaguer?

In "Gas Stations" a young man longs to have a station of his own but the old owner says that OPEC is ruining the deal.

"My Real Estate" is the second of the Astrodome stories. Whole communities could live in air-conditioned comfort if condos were built in the dome. (Apple did not foresee Hurricane Katrina.)

"Noon" is the time when daytime game shows get really dangerous.

In "Patty-Cake, Patty-Cake ... A Memoir," the new president wants donuts, really good donuts, so he turns to an old friend.

Can you believe that a book with stories like these is hard to find?

Max Apple has written a variety of books since The Oranging of America. The two I most enjoyed are memoirs I Love Gootie: My Grandmother's Story and Roommates: My Grandfather's Story. Apple now teaches at the University of Pennsylvania after years at Rice University.

Apple, Max. The Oranging of America and Other Stories. New York: Grossman Publishers, 1976. ISBN 0670528013

Libraries: A Family Business

As I was gardening yesterday, I realized it was the first time that I was at home while Bonnie was working at the reference desk at one library and my daughter Laura was working at the checkout desk of another library. I will be back at my library on Tuesday. For now, libraries are the family business.

It gets even better. Both of Bonnie's brothers work in libraries, too. One is a book binder and conservationist, while the other is a seminary librarian. How many families have this many librarians?

I know other couples who are both librarians, including some very close friends. Paul B. Wiener of the library of State University of New York-Stony Brook wrote an eight-page article "Marryin' the Librarian: Two Librarian Marriages get 'Thumbs-up' from Survey Respondents," which ran in the January 1986 issue of American Libraries, pages 16-23. He identified 180 couples, of which 167 submitted photos for the article. Our photo did not make the cut. Too bad there was no Flickr. He could have put all the photos on the Internet.

Laura heard many library-related conversations as she grew up, as she was often stuck in a room, car, or restaurant with four librarians. She claims now that she will never become a librarian, and we would never try to force the profession on her. I would be surprised if she did become a librarian, but I do know librarians whose mothers were librarians. I work with one. I just interviewed two. They all become librarians as a second career.

I do not remember ever meeting a librarian whose father was a librarian. I sure there must be some somewhere.

1986 was a long time ago. I think libraries as a family business needs to be studied again. Send me names and stories by commenting below or by email to ricklibrarian at gmail.com.

Best Books Ever: A Call for Personal Lists

Earlier this week Dan in Kentucky asked me for lists of best books, the kind of books that were important and should be read. I answered with the fiction and nonfiction lists from Modern Library, the Radcliff list, the Observer list, and the librarians' list. Dan pressed a little more and asked for my own list, possibly ten titles.

Here is my list of eleven and a challenge.

I am fudging in that I am combining books with series of books. The order of the books in the list does not matter.

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien

Children of Violence series by Doris Lessing

Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner

October Light by John Gardner

Quartet in Autumn by Barbara Pym

Hannah Coulter by Wendell Berry

Middlemarch and Silas Marner by George Eliot

The Quiet American by Graham Greene

Campion mysteries by Margery Allingham

Harry Potter by J. K. Rowling

I think these are the finest books that I have read. They describe the human condition and call for kindness, honesty, loyalty, and tolerance. Every library should have them.

My challenge is for other librarians to make their lists of the best books ever. Post them on your blogs and in the Recommending Books page of the Reader's Advisory section of the Library Success wiki. You can post them at the wiki even if you do not have a blog. Help other librarians with book recommendations and collection development.

I would call out names of librarians right here, except I am afraid I might leave someone out. If you know I have read your blog or I see you at suburban meetings or national conferences, know that I am interested in your list. Others will be, too. If I do not know you, introduce yourself with a bold person statement of your reading.

Gather at the wiki.

Truck: A Love Story by Michael Perry

I found a very pleasant surprise in my inbox at the library last Saturday. Inside a mailing envelope was an uncorrected proof of Michael Perry's new memoir Truck: A Love Story. With it came a hand-written "Howdy Rick" postcard from the author and a press release from HarperCollins. I guess Perry must have liked my review of Population 485, a book that I enjoyed reading last year.

So I have to admit that even before reading this new book to be published in October, I was favorably inclined and eager to read. I was hoping it would be just as honest and provide more insights into rural American character. I was not disappointed. Truck may not be as intense as Population 485, focusing on the safer aspects of Perry's life instead of his firefighting and paramedic work, but it includes two good love stories.

I really like Perry's visual descriptions. Pumpkin leaves remind him of tractor seats. His once thick hair gathers to a pony tail the width of a pencil. "A fist full of coupons" is "the size of a bad Uno hand." Readers can see what he describes.

Perry's new book might be considered a memoir of a year or an annual, which is probably not an official subgenre but should be. Some religious annuals describe an authors' spiritual development, meditations, and prayers over twelve months. Gardening annuals report how gardens grow through the seasons of a year. While Perry is not particularly religious, he is philosophical and describes his emotional growth in 2003 and into 2004, and his sometimes neglected garden is an important part of the story. He really focuses on rebuilding a 1951 L-120 International Harvester pickup truck with his brother-in-law Mark. Between stripping rust off the bumpers and harvesting parts from old trucks, he falls in love.

Readers of Population 485 will enjoy learning more about his mother, brothers, and friends in New Auburn, Wisconsin. They will also wonder whether he can really fix the old truck and maintain a romantic relationship.

Truck should appeal to many memoir readers, and old car mechanics might like it, too.

Perry, Michael. Truck: A Love Story. New York: HarperCollins, 2006. ISBN 0060571179