E. E. Cummings by Catherine Reef

I noticed E. E. Cummings: A Poet's Life by Catherine Reef in the Best Books for Young Adults 2008 list from YALSA in the March 1, 2008 issue of Booklist.

Poet E. E. Cummings (1894-1962) is remembered by contemporary readers more for his novel use of capitalization and punctuation than his verses. Scattered across pages and broken up into fragments, his words are hard to follow, their meanings difficult to grasp. In this compact, illustrated account of the revolutionary poet, author Catherine Reef explains that Cummings viewed his poems as bridges between language and visual art. Early in his career, he was more successful as a painter than poet. He viewed his life as an artistic mission that should not be compromised or limited by medium. The result was a life full of good friendships with other poets (Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams) and difficult romantic and family relationships.

While aimed at teenage readers, Reef does not filter adult themes like prostitution and infidelity from Cummings life. Adults may also enjoy this sympathetic portrait of a gentle but complicated man. The author includes many samples of Cummings poetry and photographs of his associates and the places that he lived and visited.

I notice that only sixteen of the public libraries in the SWAN catalog of the Metropolitan Library System have this well-done biography, and there is no agreement where it goes. More should have it somewhere in their collections.

Reef, Catherine. E. E. Cummings. Clarion Books, 2006. 149p. ISBN 9780618568499.

A Soldier's Story

A Soldier's Story, a 1984 film about racial segregation in World War II, is a mystery in several ways. Most obviously, it is a film in which an military investigator seeks to discover who murdered the friendless Sargent Waters on a foggy night right outside camp. Did a local member of the Ku Klux Klan kill the black soldier as a "get out of Louisiana" message aimed at the African Americans in training? Did a white officer who felt Waters was disrespectful shoot him? Could it have been one of his own men, all of whom came from the Negro baseball league?

The other mystery is how so few of us remembered A Soldier's Story, which was based on a Pulitzer Prize winning play and nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. Out of nineteen people at the Thomas Ford Memorial Library's showing of the film, only one had seen it when it was released twenty-four years ago. It was really quiet good. How had it been forgotten?

The story follows Captain Davenport, an African American investigator well played by Howard E. Rollins, Jr., as he questions anyone who knew the victim. Among the men from the company that he interviews is Private First Class Peterson, played by a very young Denzel Washington. In flashbacks, Waters is played by Adolph Caesar, who was nominated as best supporting actor.

The film has a very theatrical quality, as one might expect from a movie based on a play. At points lighting spotlights characters telling their memories. Dialogue has a scripted and quotable feel that one used to find in movies. It also seems almost like a musical, as it starts with Patti LaBelle as Big Mary singing in the local colored bar, and several other scenes follow with Larry Riley as C. J. Memphis singing in the mess hall or back in the bar.

A Soldier's Story was a good choice for our discussion group. We talked about the characters and the mystery first. Then we discussed the segregation of the American military until 1948 and the importance of military integration for the civil rights movement that followed. I recommend the film to film fans and other libraries holding discussions.

Laughing Without an Accent by Firoozeh Dumas

It is fun reading books before they are published. I get a privileged feeling just holding a review copy, which may be a bit silly, seeing that the publishers gave many of them away at the Public Library Association Conference in Minneapolis. Still, I was really pleased when Uma from our library offered to let me read an advanced reader's edition of Laughing Without an Accent by Firoozeh Dumas, the author of Funny in Farsi. The book is due out at the end of April 2008.

In her new volume, Dumas continues to tell amusing stories about her life as an Iranian who moved to the United States as a child before the revolution of 1979. In some ways, she grew up very American, watching television, eating fast food, and going away to college. Still, because of her early years in Iran, her perspectives remain atypical. She is a sort of inside outsider, a perfect person to notice the odd aspects of American life that natives tend to take for granted.

Many of her stories are about adjusting or not adjusting to a new culture. She features her own experiences, as well as those of her parents and her husband, who is French. Each story is well-crafted and compelling, and she makes readers feel as though they too are immigrants trying to sort out what to do in unfamiliar situations. I think my favorite story may have been her telling of her uncle's funeral at which the family traded the usual Iranian mourning customs for eulogies remembering the uncle's humorous traits; Dumas could hardly believe the family would accept this break with tradition but they did. She makes a point about how America has changed her family. She also tells how Iranians and other immigrants have changed America.

Most public libraries are going to want Dumas's new book. It should be very popular with memoir readers. It should also be popular with librarians, whom she compliments several times.

Dumas, Firoozeh. Laughing Without an Accent. Villard, 2008. ISBN 9780345499561.

Freedom for the Thought That We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment by Anthony Lewis

If I wrote "All war is immoral," could I be arrested and sent to prison. In many countries where the military holds power, I could. Even in the U.S., it depends on the time and the place, according to Anthony Lewis in his recent book Freedom for the Thought That We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment.

During the First World War, when there was very little tolerance for dissent across the country, the Montana legislature passed a very repressive sedition law. A traveling salesman who said in a Montana saloon that wartime food restrictions were a joke was sentenced to seven-to-twenty years of hard labor. At the same time, socialist Eugene V. Debs was convicted of violating the Espionage Act for saying in a speech in Canton, Ohio that three men who had been arrested for helping a draft resister were heroic. Did the Supreme Court help Debs? No, it upheld his conviction in 1919 and he served three years in prison. The man in Montana was luckier, as a federal judge there ruled that he and 47 other residents of the state had been wrongly convicted.

Though the First Amendment to the U. S. Constitution protecting free speech was established in 1791, the first favorable ruling in the Supreme Court was in 1931. It took the efforts of numerous federal judges and Supreme Court justices through time to finally uphold the right of free speech. Among the heroes in this book are Learned Hand who was ruling in favor of First Amendment rights before most other federal judges, Oliver Wendell Holmes who took up the cause after the First World War, and Louis D. Brandeis whose dissenting opinions eventually swayed the Court.

A point that Lewis makes throughout the book is that our constitutional rights are not protected simply by the existence of the constitution. There have to be brave jurists willing to uphold the rights when legislatures, governors, and presidents try to circumvent them. In making his point, he points out the many attempts of the current administration to brush the constitution aside. The job of protecting our rights never ends.

Freedom for the Thought That We Hate is a quick and compelling read that discusses many aspects of what is protected by the First Amendment. Librarians should read it and put it on display.

Lewis, Anthony. Freedom for the Thought That We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment. Basic Books, 2007. ISBN 9780465039173

Your Brain on Cubs edited by Dan Gordon

When I heard the title Your Brain on Cubs, I pictured an ironic collection of confessional stories from die-hard fans. I expected to enjoy reading about long afternoons of watching the Phillies and the Cubs run their scores into double digits and of the heartbreak of seasons lost. I did not expect a serious book about brain science and psychology.

Your Brain on Cubs is a collection of essays by neurologists who tell about what is going on in the players' and fans' brains during the game and away from the park. Central to the discussion in "The Depths of Loyalty: Exploring the Brain of the Die-hard Fan" by Jordan Grafman is the idea that Cub fans actual find social benefits from the team's losing tradition. Around the team is a community of disappointed fans who live with a sense of mission from year to year. Members of this group exhibit great ability to delay gratification, to accept other hardships, and to reflect on life. Rooting for the team is thus character building and good for self-esteem.

Later essays deal with many serious issues, such as player use of performance enhancing drugs, the superstitions of fans and players, and the psychology of winning. It is best to allot ample time to read.

Your Brain on Cubs is not for the casual reader, as there is professionally serious vocabulary at points. If you have time and patience, there is a much to ponder. Warning: serious fans may see themselves in the clinical studies.

Your Brain on Cubs. Dana Press, 2008. ISBN 9781932594287

Jordan County by Shelby Foote

At some point this winter, Chicago Tribune book columnist Julia Keller wrote about authors who wrote fiction and nonfiction. One of the names included was Shelby Foote. I have never taken the time to attempt his Civil War history set (we have a ten volume illustrated edition in my library), so I thought I'd try his fiction. I got Jordan County, published in 1954.

On the paperback cover is the label "A Novel." That is a mistake. I wonder if the marketing department at the publisher whipped this up without opening the book. Jordan County is collection of seven short stories set in a fictional county in Mississippi along the Mississippi River, presented in reverse chronological order. The presence of the river is about the only connecting element. Short is also a relative idea. One of the stories is 150 pages and could be called a novella.

"Child by Fever," the long short story, is a masterpiece of slowly simmering Southern tragedy. As a reader, I knew what would happen in the end because Foote told me right at the beginning, but I was as caught in the narrative as its characters. Neither they nor I could do anything about the outcome. Readers who enjoy dark family sagas will appreciate this well-crafted, symmetrical story.

The first story is set in the late 1940s or early 1950s. What the World War II veteran does in "Rain Down Home" could easily be in a story about a returnee from Vietnam or Iraq.

Of the seven stories, only "Pillar of Fire" is set during the Civil War, the era with which Foote's writings are generally associated. In it we get both Northern and Southern viewpoints in an incident of useless violence. I mourned for the needlessly destroyed cabins and plantation mansions.

Foote was a well-spoken scholar, as we saw from his commentaries on Ken Burns's Civil War documentary. He was every bit as eloquent in his fiction. I bet that Civil War history is worth reading, too.

Foote, Shelby. Jordan County. Vintage Books, 1992. ISBN 0679736166

Library Books from a Vending Machine: Go Where They Are

In yesterday's Library Link of the Day is an article from China about a vending machine for library materials. It holds up to fours hundred books, CDs or DVDs on three conveyor belts behind glass. Clients can use their cards to borrow items that drop into a drawer. If they do not have a card, they can make them on the spot. The inboard catalog links back to the Shenzhen Library which has 2.17 million items for which reserves can be placed. Clients are notified to return to the vending machine when items are available. Items may also return the items to the machine. RFID is used in the checkout and return processes.

This seems an interesting way for the library to go to the client. There might be an interesting number of applications we could make in both our urban and rural communities. In our suburb, it might be interesting to have one at the commuter rail station. We could probably stock it with donated popular reading and hardly touch the main collection. Time strapped commuters might be grateful!

The Canon: The Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science by Natalie Angier

I am 3.5 billion years old. More about that in a moment.

In the opening pages of The Canon: The Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science, author Natalie Angier rues the attitudes that parents, educators, and other common folk often express about science. They say things like "We know it is hard, but just bear with it" to their children, passing on their prejudices. She contends that most children like science until adults dissuade them with their apologies and the dry ways that they teach. Wondering about how the world works is naturally interesting until young minds are worn down with standardized assignments and deadlines.

Believing the kids do not stand a chance until adults are re-educated, she takes readers through a tour of all the sciences in The Canon, starting with mathematics and statistics. Here she starts with her many splendid science stories and observations that awe and entertain. One of the sections that I liked best was about numbers and the age of the earth. She holds that the earth is really quite young, which may be hard to believe considering that it is 5.7 billion years. She points out that the number is not unimaginably large. Take the ages of all people currently living and add them up, and the formation of the earth can be reached over twenty times. Our body surfaces have more than 5.7 billion bacteria cell on them. What's the big deal about 5.7 billion?

Throughout the text, Angier is enthusiastic and entertaining. She talks about the three kinds of dental floss she uses, vividly describes the inside of the planet, and gives the best explanation of the expanding universe and the end of time that I've ever heard. In telling about the wines ancient civilizations drank to keep from getting water-borne diseases, she says "Better tipsy than typhoid." Her accounts of chemical reactions with their affairs, partners, and bonds is definitely for the mature reader.

As I said before, I am 3.5 billion years old. So are you. According to Angier, it was about 3.5 billion years ago that the first single cell organisms appeared, and the DNA within them evolved to form all the life that followed. All of the code from our initial and intermediate ancestors is still in our DNA. Life has never died out in that time, and we are the continuation of what went before. We are not really individuals. We are communities.

Angier spends a good bit of time explaining evolution and how the word "theory" does not mean the scientists are just guessing. She is 100 percent behind evolution and contends that any good scientist is as well. There is no doubt.

I listen to the audiobook brightly read by Nike Doukas over the course of a couple of weeks. I recommend it for making the drive to work and dusting the house entertaining.

Angier, Natalie. The Canon: The Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science. Houghton Mifflin, 2007. ISBN 9780618242955

11 compact discs. HighBridge Audio, 2007. ISBN 9781598870893

A Mile Square of Chicago by Marjorie Warvelle Bear

A Mile Square of Chicago by Marjorie Warvelle Bear is a book with a long story of its own. Bear wrote the manuscript in the 1960s and 1970s and died in 1982 without publishing. Though her daughter Marjorie Harbaugh Bennett's efforts to sell the book to a publisher were described in a Chicago Tribune column by Eric Zorn in 1994, it was late 2007 when the long-awaited book finally appeared in print.

The square mile of Chicago in question is directly west of downtown, a bit west of the Chicago River. It now includes the United Center, surrounded by its parking lots. Along its southern edge is the Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center and the Eisenhower Expressway. It is no longer thought of as a family oriented neighborhood, as it was in the 1850 to 1920 period described by Bear in her book .

A Mile Square of Chicago, more of a reference book than narrative, is divided into three books. The first part is "Book One: Before My Day," which tells about the area up to 1897, when Bear was born. The first chapter tells about Brown School, an elementary school started in 1852, and its famous students. Tad Lincoln, Bertha Honore Palmer, Lillian Russell, Flo Ziegfield, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Eddie Foy, and five others each get between two and twenty-two pages telling about their lives, much of it beyond their years at Brown School. Most get pictures. The second chapter then tells about Old Central High School and another list of students, none of whom I recognize. The third chapter tells about the beginnings of all the area hospitals.

"Book Two: In My Day" starts with a detailed description of Bear's house at 654 West Monroe Street, which was later renumbered 1743 West Monroe Street. This may be the most important contribution of this book, as the author gives a deep look into everyday life at the beginning of the twentieth century. She tells about the rooms, the furniture, the bathroom fixtures, the kitchen, and the back yard. She includes interior and exterior photos, and describes ice and coal delivery. Then she tells what a walker would see in the immediate neighborhood and on a walk on Ashland Avenue.

Further along in Book Two, Bear uses school records to tell about textbooks and assigned reading and public library records to tell about children's books and popular periodicals. Her friends at Brown School, the clothes they wore, the music they played, and how they celebrated holidays. Then the author tells about more schools and more famous students. The names I recognize are the animator Walt Disney and the novelist Phyllis A. Whitney.

The third section mostly updates information about schools and hospitals in the area up to the 1970s. For a pleasure reader, this is the least interesting section as there are no personal details.

Bear ends with a short philosophical section, which is most quotes from poetry. It expresses the idea that a small neighborhood can give much to the world at large.

The 548-page book is a model of what would be a great personal project for any family history-minded person. A collection of family and neighborhood information could be invaluable to grandchildren and later generations, making their ancestors more than just names on charts.

A Mile Square of Chicago is an important acquisition to Chicago area libraries and research collections outside the area. The only way to obtain it appears to be through Google Base. If I read the source's entry correct, there may only be 32 copies left.

Bear, Marjorie Warvelle. A Mile Square of Chicago. TIPRAC, 2007. ISBN 9780963399540

Sports Genre Study from the Adult Reading Round Table

Last week I did something I should do more often. On Thursday afternoon I attended the Adult Reading Round Table Nonfiction Genre Study. Twenty-five librarians from around the Chicago area and Wisconsin met at the Downers Grove Public Library and spent nearly two hours talking about narrative sports books.

The homework assignment was to read one sports title by David Halberstam and two other sports books either from a recommended list or from one's own library. The idea was that there could be some common ground to begin the discussion and many directions it could go. And it did go in many directions, as we discovered a great variety of subjects, styles, and appeal factors in sports books.

Someone took minutes, which I will get in my email as a member, so I did not write much down. After three days, this is what sticks in my memory.

You don't have to like sports to like good sports books because they are about much more than games. They are always about overcoming some type of difficulty if not downright adversity. They may also be coming of age stories, friendship stories, tributes, memoirs, exposes, history, or even how-to-do-it. If they are stories about women, they may be women's rights stories. If they feature African Americans, they may be civil rights stories.

Being a fan does help some sports books. We had librarians totally disagree on whether Lance Armstrong was an inspiration or a jerk. What the reader brought to the book guided how she/he perceived the author's voice. Being a fan also helps if the book focuses on the action of a game, which a non-fan may find tedious if not written well. Fans are more likely to like the less narrative books on statistics or sports equipment or stadiums.

Some sports fans read books on their favorite athletes or teams to relive their lives. Lots of memories are mixed up with the days that their teams did well.

It is not enough to put out a selection of area sports team books and expect them all to move. Hand selling may help. They still need to be attractive for most readers to select them.

We probably talked more about Friday Night Lights by H. G. Bissinger than about any other title. I am going to have to move it up my reading list. I heard other titles that sound as though I might like them, including Can I Keep My Jersey? by Paul Shirley and Your Brain on Cubs edited by Dan Gordon.

The next ARRT Nonfiction Genre Study will meet at the Des Plaines Public Library on June 3, 2008. The title of the discussion is "Mining the 800s," and we will all try to identify those great books that get lost in the Dewey graveyard. You can become a member and get the announcements and minutes. The details are on the ARRT website.

Mr. Adams's Last Crusade: John Quincy Adams's Extraordinary Post-Presidential Life in Congress by Joseph Wheelan

After reading Profiles in Courage by John F. Kennedy several weeks ago, I decided that I wanted to know more about John Quincy Adams, sixth U. S. president and the man who knew both George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Fortunately for me, the new biography Mr. Adams's Last Crusade: John Quincy Adams's Extraordinary Post-Presidential Life in Congress by Joseph Wheelan just reached the library. Like the chapter in Kennedy's book, Wheelan book focuses on the later part of Adams's public career, when he served in the U. S. Congress long past the age most politicians retire.

Like his father before him, John Quincy Adams had few friends. Both men were studious, serious, and unforgiving. Neither would bend to the dictates of a political party, thus separating them from their colleagues. In the son's case, Washington liked him for his skillful diplomacy on European assignments and Lincoln liked him for his long-running opposition to Southern Democrats trying to expand the reach of slavery. Most of the country's leaders in the years between the first president and the congressman from Illinois, however, hated Adams for his arrogance and tenacity. Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, and John C. Calhoun were bitter enemies.

Much of Wheelan's book is about Adams's fight in Congress to remove a gag rule that prevented members from introducing citizen petitions if they opposed slavery. A coalition of Southern congressmen and Northern friends had passed the restriction to quiet Adams and his abolitionist allies. Adams argued that the restriction violated the U. S. Constitution's First Amendment. Of course, the deeper struggle was over how to end or extend the institution of slavery, which Adams predicted would end in war. As part of the fight, Adams fought bills to annex Texas, condemned the forced removal of Native Americans from their lands, and supported the rights of women to write petitions (but not to vote).

This all sounds very serious, but there are light moments in the book. I especially liked descriptions of Adams's relations with his parents and the great devotion of his wife Louisa. The author also had a bit of fun pointing out that after Adams spoke for four and a half long hours at the Amistad slave ship case at the Supreme Court, one of the justices went home and died in his sleep.

For American history collections, libraries tend to buy heavily in the periods of the wars and are often thin in covering the in-between periods. This new and compelling Adams biography is a great title for the gap between the War of 1812 and the Civil War. Many libraries should add it.

Wheelan, Joseph. Mr. Adams's Last Crusade: John Quincy Adams's Extraordinary Post-Presidential Life in Congress. Public Affairs, 2008. ISBN 9780786720125.

Off Your Seat and on Your Feet: Continued Conversation

Jodi Lee and Christopher Korenowsky of the Columbus Metropolitan Library have quite bravely asked me for my thoughts about their PLA presentation. Before sending them my thoughts, I looked at their online handouts, which are really quite nice. The handouts do not tell you everything you want to know, but they do start the conversation about proactive reference with very relevant points. What I think is really good is the way that they incorporate staff testimonials into the attractive documents. Take a look at Telling Our Story and Off Your Seat and On Your Feet! The think about your reference service area.

Gulf Music: Poems by Robert Pinsky

April is poetry month. Selling poetry in our fast-paced world is a difficult task, but libraries may catch the eye of a reader or two with Gulf Music by Robert Pinsky on display. The bright Buddhist cover with skeletons who may be either dancing or fighting is hard to pass by without examining. It is a bit morbid, but poetry often is.

In referring to the "Gulf" in the title poem, Pinsky is topical and reflective. He does mean for the reader to think about the catastrophe in New Orleans but he brings in the 1900 Galveston hurricane and the gulf that is within us all.

Pinsky's poems can be enjoy in various ways. They simply sound good read aloud. I also like looking for the bits of wisdom or controversy within the verses. In the poem "The Forgetting" he challenges the reader:

Hardly anybody can name all eight of their great-grandparents.
Can you? Will your children's grandchildren remember your name?

I have spent much time in the past working on my family history (not much lately) and I find even I have trouble answering this question on a moment's notice. Are we too doomed to be forgotten?

The second section of the collection deals with the concept of "thing" and includes several thought provoking poems about the life within inanimate objects. Of course, a reader I am particularly interested in the thought of the poem "2. Book." Do other readers dread finishing books?

Pinsky, who was our poet laureate from 1997-2000, is usually accessible and a good choice for a Poetry Month display in the library.

Pinsky, Robert. Gulf Music: Poems. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007. ISBN 9780374167493

PLA Reconsidered

Nearly 10,000 librarians, support staff, trustees, and others attended the 2008 Public Library Association National Conference in Minneapolis last week. Now, they have all gone home and must consider what they saw and heard.

As you might expect, there were some mixed messages. Some of my programs recommended new services and the tasks to accomplish their creation and maintenance. Others admonished us for trying to do too many things. The tough thing now is weighing what is worth doing.

I continued to report on PLABlog during the conference. Here are my final reports:

From Hype to Help: Making A Difference with New Technologies

Think Outside the Book: Online Service as Outreach - about teen services

When the Story is True: Practicing Nonfiction Readers Advisory

The next PLA National Conference is in 2010 in Portland, Oregon. I hope to go.

The Memoir: The Readers' Advisor's Dream or Nightmare

With the controversy of totally fabricated memoirs in the news, The Memoir: The Readers' Advisor's Dream or Nightmare was a hot topic session at PLA A good-sized crowd congregated at 8:30 on the final morning to hear a panel discussion about the collecting and promoting of memoirs in libraries.

The program started with Donna Seaman of Booklist comparing the memoir to biography and autobiography, both of which are usually linear in arrangement and externally verifiable. The memoir is a slipperier item, more akin to poetry than history. Its purpose is to communicate the feel of a life, or, as Seaman says, "the texture of one's days and nights." There is more demand for an honesty of disclosure than for getting every fact straight. Because it is "a life remembered," there is bound to be mistakes. Unfortunately, some authors have violated the trust recently.

A good memoir is about more than the individual life. It usually includes ever widening circles of family, community, and universe. The memoirist seeks to describe experience in a effort to find meaning or identity and to communicate hard lessons learned. Like novels, they do this through the setting of scenes, describing of characters, and telling of stories.

Seaman had an interesting story of being a reviewer. After publishing reviews of memoirs, she sometimes gets calls from the author's family, complaining that what he/she wrote was not true. In response, all Seamon can do is refer them back to their son/daughter/cousin/ex-wife who wrote the book. She is just a reviewer with only the book to judge.

The speaker then reported on two subgenres of memoirs that are currently very popular. The first was the memoirs of people of mixed heritage. Among the books she recommended were:

• Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama
• One Drop: My Father's Hidden Life - A Story of Race and Family Secrets by Bliss Broyard
• Sweeter the Juice by Shirlee Taylor Haizlip
• Another Way Home: The Tangled Roots of Race in One Chicago Family by Ronee Hartfield

Identify is a prevailing theme in these books, and the author often has to become a sleuth to uncover the story.

Environmental memoirs are also popular, as new books are coming out to join Walden, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, and Desert Solitaire. Among the many books Seaman suggested are the following titles:

• Naturalist by Edward O. Wilson
• Unbowed by Wangari Maathai
• Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place by Terry Tempest Williams
• Trespass: Living at the Edge of the Promised Land by Amy Irving

Joyce Saricks followed with thoughts about why librarians love and hate memoirs. On the positive side, they have many of the same appeal factors as fiction, including character, setting, and story. They are hot in a time when the public is fascinated with the personal story, as shown by the popularity of reading blogs and of watching reality television. On the other hand, they are hard to categorize and shelve and sometimes hard to identify, depending on how the publishers market them.

Saricks added that she usually prefers audiobooks not read by the author. For memoirs, however, authors as readers is often a plus, as their personalities come through. She particularly recommends David Sedaris in audio.

Defining a memoir is not exactly easy, according to Saricks. Many narrative nonfiction books have memoir qualities even when there are third person author because these reporter (1) include so much of their subjects voices and (2) their quests to get the stories are memoirs. She recommended Shadow Divers by Robert Kuson.

Barry Trott of the Williamsburg Regional Library, Virginia, said that while character is the main appeal of a memoir, to choose one to suggest to a reader, you have to look at the other appeal factors such as setting, subject matter, story lines, etc.

Trott talked about the travel memoir, which has several common scenarios: including the hapless traveler (A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson), someone escaping their everyday life, or someone going to exotic places. These have the appeal of letting readers go interesting places without leaving home.

He also talked briefly about the recently hot food memoir. Chefs, waiters, and critics are among the people telling stories about their experiences. Calvin Trillin has been doing this for years, and even Euell Gibbons' Stalking the Wild Asparagus was a food memoir of sorts.

Many more titles were mentioned by all the speakers. Seaman said that she will put a list of them on the Booklist Online website.

When asked whether they would move the recently exposed memoirs to fiction, the speakers said no in most cases. Most of the exposures have been of fudging the truth. The totally fabricated memoirs may require some rethinking.

The Abbess of Crewe: A Modern Morality Tale by Muriel Spark

I am reading old forgotten books again. The Western Springs Library Friends have more books than they can store at the moment and have a table loaded with free books. I found The Abbess of Crewe: A Modern Morality Tale by Muriel Spark, one of my favorite novelists, a couple of weeks ago and chose it to take on my trip to Minneapolis. I started it in a coffee shop yesterday after the closing session of the Public Library Association at 1:00 p.m. and found time to finish it just after takeoff of my 6:45 p.m. flight to Chicago. At 116 pages, it is a delightful quick read.

The story takes place in a convent of nuns in Great Britain in which the old abbess has died and a new abbess is elected. In the period of mourning before the peers select their new leader, who will exchange her black robes for white, a thimble is stolen from a nun's sewing box. The box itself is a highly debated subject among the sisters, as it is a bit grand for a nun who has renounced all worldly possessions. That young nun has also frequently missed attending Matins and Lauds, and the gossip is thick.

The 1974 copyright date is significant. I do not want to spoil surprises, but I will say that Spark skillfully relocated highly reported events of 1972 to 1974 to her fictional nunnery. Anyone who lived through those years will recognize the replay by the end of chapter one. The book is wickedly funny, and Spark's insertion of classical poetry as the new abbess's theatrical asides is masterful.

I have not actually figured it all out. Can someone tell me who Sister Gertrude is and why she is flying around the globe visiting remote cultures?

Spark, Muriel. The Abbess of Crewe: A Modern Morality Tale. Viking Press, 1974. ISBN 0670100293

Off Your Seat and On Your Feet! Proactive Reference Customer Service

Jodi Lee and Christopher Korenowsky of the Columbus Metropolitan Library, Ohio, confused an audience of librarians at the Public Library Association today. It was not that their proposal was misunderstood. It was very clear that they are eliminating their reference desks and having their librarians roam, float, wander, hover, whatever. What was confusing was their presentation. At moments they seemed to be saying that the action is a very radical idea, but at other moments they reassured the audience that they are not really changing that much.

Korenowsky also lost many of us with his "three-tiered research phase" portion of the talk. He did not tell us any of the research findings. What did "knowledge vs data" refer to? How are Starbucks, Blockbuster, and Nordstroms relevant? I know I've had lackluster service at each of these stores, and they still have big service desks.

I think the duo make a mistake in organizing their program around dispelling myths. We now know a lot about what they are not doing and not really that much about what they are.

I am sounding very cranky, but I am actually very sympathetic to the idea. Our library has a huge desk that separates the librarians from the clients. I want our reference librarians up and about helping people when there are people to help. I wish they would have given me more solid arguments for redesigning service areas and changing working procedures. They could have talked more about the smaller desk designs and the working of the headsets. I think they missed an opportunity to be really helpful.

Also, the mantra "stop doing things that don't need to be done" to address the work that librarians do at service desks when not assisting clients is not realistic in small libraries where there are not centralized services to do all the non-client assistance work. Lee and Korenowsky are limiting their ideas to larger libraries unnecessarily with this approach. I hope they revisit and revise what can be a liberating idea.

Minneapolis Skyway Hike Slide Show

For those unable to visualize the PLA 2008 experience, here is a slide show of my walk from the Radisson Hotel to the Minneapolis Convention Center. There are a few tricky turns.



My best time was twelve minutes.

Down the escalator at the end of the Skywalk was a really nice convention center, where we had a really good conference.

Girl Scout Cookies on Sale in Late March!

Girl Scout Cookies on Sale in Late March!
Originally uploaded by ricklibrarian.

I knew there was a reason to come to Minnesota in late March besides the beautiful weather. On Wednesday, March 26, there were three tables along the Skyway, selling lots of cookies to conference visitors and office workers of Minneapolis. There seemed to more parents than actual Girl Scouts, who must have been in school. Several of my friends at the conference were thrilled to hear that there were cookies for sale. I gave directions.

No Snow in Minneapolis

The forecasts were for rain and snow in Minneapolis yesterday, but we got a beautiful day instead. It was a good day filled with meetings, three of which I reported on PLABlog:

Readers' Advisory Toolkit III, with ideas about how to get books off the shelves and into the hands of others and how to have the books when the readers want them
Technozoo with Leonard Souza, which featured news about Web 2.o Internet sites and gadgets that will may work their way into libraries
21st Century Library Design, with many out of the box ideas

I also recommend Cat William's report on John Wood's opening session speech. She gets in a lot of quotes I liked.

I expect more to report today.

What Does It Take to Be Good at Reference in the Age of Google?: A PLA Presentation by Joseph Janes

Joseph Janes, Associate Professor of the Information School at the University of Washington, Seattle, spoke today about "What Does It Take to Be Good at Reference in the Age of Google?" It is a natural topic for Janes, one he has discussed well many times before. The topic keeps changing and he keeps up. He was particularly entertaining and thought-provoking this morning. (It was the fifth time I have heard him speak. Does that make me a groupie?)

Janes began with an old quote, as he usually does. This time he quoted librarian Margaret Hutchins from 1944 to emphasize that good reference does three things for the client:

• saves money
• saves time
• ensures possession of facts which by themselves they could not obtain

He came back to these numerous times through the presentation.

According to Janes, what Google and other search engines do is provide ready reference. The services is "free, quick, easy, good enough." He says that reference librarians lose on free and often lose on quick and easy, if the information need is really ready reference. Where the librarians win is at good enough. We do much better than good enough and we need to market that.

The professor said that as librarians we will continue to do ready reference, but it is not what we should emphasize in marketing. When we put out publicity saying we can find the capital of Nepal or the number of seats in a stadium, people interpret that as the limit of our abilities and think "I can do that with Google." Instead we should be saying what Margaret Hutchins said:

We save you time and money and find information that you can not find on your own.

Janes said that we are seriously challenged by the search engines for the attention of the public, but we do have many strengths. Librarians beat them at the following:

• gathering
• selecting
• evaluating
• deciding
• understanding
• helping
• depth
• accuracy

Librarians rule when it comes to print and fee-based information. Google is just an ad agency with a search agency attached.

What is most essential for librarians is that they do good reference interviews, whether they be face-to-face, telephone, virtual, IM, email, or whatever. Search engines will never do this as well, though they are trying to establish question services. The fact that they keep trying indicates they know that are still lacking.

Janes says that we must be the best users of the search engines, knowing all the Google tricks, such as inurl: and filetype: and view:timeline. We need to learn to use the slidebars in Live Academic and Yahoo.

The public library is at a great advantage, as it is the only point in many communities for the citizens to connect to the Internet. We should leverage this to our political advantage. Let people know how happy we are that they come for our computers. Never put up unnecessary blocks.

We should also remember that many of the people who ask questions only do so because they have failed to find an answer themselves. They are as a last resort asking a stranger in public. Other professions have private offices for giving out information.

Janes said again that print collections are our strength and we should market them. This advantage will fade in it time, but we still have it.

Librarians need to be tool makers. He still likes creating virtual pathfinders. It is one of the ways we add value to our collections. He also said that we need to take over Wikipedia instead of crabbing about it.

Near the end he said that as good as we are in person we have to be even better online. Our websites have to be compelling, effective, and high quality. Our virtual reference and IM need to be great. If not, we will be quickly cut off.

He finished by saying that librarians are first among the professions. If we include archivists in our midst, we keep the culture civilized. The human record is in our care. We are essential.

Travel's in the White Man's Grave by Donald MacIntosh

Working as a forester in western and southern Africa from the 1950s to the 1980s, Scotsman Donald MacIntosh saw more than trees. He witnessed two changes in the African landscape: African nations gained independence and lumber companies destroyed many of the ancient rain forests. He tells about his happy and sad experiences during this time in his book Travels in the White Man's Grave.

MacIntosh refers to the White Man's Grave as that portion of the African continent in which many Europeans met their end due to malaria and other diseases for which they were not prepared. It is often hot, humid, and rainy. Until recently this area had many forests filled with valuable hardwood prized in Europe and America for making furniture and floors. When he arrived in Africa, harvesting of these woods was a slow and selective process. The introduction of chainsaws, monster trucks, and corporate dictates to deliver supplies quickly denuded forests and destroyed the economies of local tribes.

Travels in the White Man's Grave is not just a book about what has gone wrong. MacIntosh tells many humorous and many harrowing stories of the old way of life. He survives floodwaters, snakes, driver ants, and face-to-face meetings with leopards and forest buffalo. His story about a buffalo stamping out his campfire is very funny and reminiscent of the 1980s film The God's Must Be Crazy.

Travels in the White Man's Grave is not an easy to find book, as all the print editions are English or Scottish. Recorded Books has issued an audiobook on compact discs. If you like good African stories, it is worth the effort to interlibrary loan.

MacIntosh, Donald. Travel's in the White Man's Grave. London: Abacus, 2001. ISBN 0349114358.

7 compact discs, Recorded Books, 2002. 1402529228.

John Wood, Nancy Pearl, and a Day at PLA

The first day of programs at the Public Library Association National Conference in Minneapolis is over. I have written reports on Book Buzz with Nancy Pearl and the opening address by John Wood, author of Leaving Microsoft to Change the World. You may find these and other conference reports at PLABlog.

After today's session, I decided to see how John Wood's book about building schools and libraries in Asia and Africa is doing in the SWAN catalog of the Metropolitan Library System (outside Chicago). I see that readers are not checking out Wood's book the way they are Greg Mortenson's Three Cups of Tea. Both were tourists who made promises to help rural communities in the Himalayas, and in both cases, the one act led to many more. Wood's organization skills are much stronger than Mortenson's and his Room to Read organization appears to have actually accomplished more to date. Both men have been on Oprah. So, why is Mortenson's book more popular?

I believe the answer is Mortenson is more of a story teller. Rather, his coauthor David Oliver Relin is more of a story teller. Wood's book appears to have more in the way of statistics and rhetoric. Also, Mortenson started trying to help when he was an impoverished nurse and accident prone climber. Wood was already a wealthy man who risked less to quit his job to help the needy. Book groups have taken up Three Cups of Tea because they like stories.

Still, I think librarians as a profession should do all they can to help Wood by promoting his book. We should display, review it, and suggest it to book groups. His goal includes building 20,000 libraries and training 40,000 librarians in third world countries by 2020.

*****

I learned today that you really can get around downtown Minneapolis without ever going outside. I left my coat in the hotel and took the Skyway to the convention center. My best time so far is twelve minutes from room to center.

Nancy Pearl did not actually speak much at the Book Buzz program. She introduced the program and let the spokespeople from several publishers promote their forthcoming books. I was most interested in Milkweed, a small nonprofit press from Minnesota.

Tomorrow the regular presentations start. I have a very full schedule.

American Association of University Women

American Association of University Women
Originally uploaded by ricklibrarian.

I did not realize that the American Association of University Women owned buildings other than the headquarters in Washington, D.C. I found this lovely building across the park from the Minneapolis Institute of the Arts yesterday. According to the local AAUW website, the group has programs in this center, including an upcoming series on civility. I am impressed.

Nancy Pearl in Minneapolis

PLA 2008 - Tuesday 024
Originally uploaded by Fremont Librarian.

Here is a photo from Freemont Librarian which reminds us that Nancy Pearl is speaking at PLA today from 10:00 a.m. to noon. FL took a whole series of these photos around the city, which you can find at his Flickr site.

Go to Flickr and search the tags for PLA2008 and you will be able to see all the latest photos from attendees.

Minneapolis Institute of Arts

Today I arrived safely in Minneapolis to attend the Public Library Association's National Conference. With an afternoon to myself before obligations, I walked down to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, which is seven blocks directly south of the Minneapolis Convention Center. I then spent several hours wandering through the classically beautiful museum.

I think the strength of the MIA is the Asian collection. I was most impressed with its four traditional Asian rooms, including the 17th century Chinese reception room with its twelve paneled painted screen and a Japanese tea garden. The serenity of the rooms is very appealing. Other highlights of the Asian rooms are many elegant Japanese prints and scrolls, large horse sculptures from the Near East, and sculptures of the Hindu gods and goddesses.

As a full-purpose art museum, the MIA has rooms with Egyptian, Greek, and Roman art and artifacts. There is an entire room of Roman busts in which only one still has a nose. The museum also cover the full history of European art, including one room devoted to the Italian Renaissance. I especially liked the two paintings by Fra Angelico. Bonnie would have liked some of these paintings, particularly the one with colorful angel wings.

I did not see any item in the museum that I already knew from looking at art books (if you do not count the Monet haystack), but there were nice pieces nonetheless. Pastoral Landscape by Claude Gellée (called Le Lorrain), Fanatics of Tangier by Ferdinand-Victor-Eugène Delacroix, and Portrait of Mlle. Hortense Valpinçon by Edgar Degas were my favorites. There were numerous works by Vuillard and Corot.

In the decorative arts area were beautifully done period rooms with antique furniture and wall coverings. I really liked the dark paneling in the Queen Anne's room.

If you are ever in Minneapolis and if you enjoy art, the MIA is a must to see. It is free everyday. There is a #11 bus to the museum, so you do not have to walk as I did. Schedule about three hours, allowing time for a snack in the coffee shop.

Bound for PLA in Minneapolis

Tomorrow I am flying to Minneapolis to attend the Public Library Association's 12th National Conference. While I am there, I will write for PLA Blog as well as posting news, reports, and photos here. So far, I know that I will attend Nancy Pearl's Wednesday morning Book Buzz program and the opening session keynote by John Wood. Then it gets tough deciding what to attend. I will focus on programs about reference, readers' advisory, and technology.

To find other PLA reports from bloggers, try searching for PLA2008 in Technorati.

I'd better finish packing. See you in Minnesota.

The Good Rat by Jimmy Breslin

Jimmy Breslin keeps bad company in the new crime biography The Good Rat.

At age 72, mobster Burton Kaplan became a rat. He had been a stand-up criminal all his life, accepting his punishments without naming names. Knowing that he might become the scapegoat of an ongoing FBI investigation of organized crime and wanting to reduce a sentence that he was already serving, he became an informant in the case against two Mafia cops. It was not anything personal that made him do, as he said from the witness stand.

"About a month later Steve Caracappa came to my house with a box of cookies, and he says, Is it okay if we talk? And I says sure. I like Steve. I liked him then. I like him now. I am not doing him any good by being a rat, but I always liked him."

Caracappa is one of two bad cops that Kaplan often hired to kill mobsters that crossed him. From their squad car, they would pull the victims off the street or road, tell them that they were going to police headquarters, and then go to an auto chop shop to complete their contracts. Caracappa and his partner Lou Eppolito were efficient murderers, but they never earned enough to quit their day jobs. Kaplan was a tough negotiator.

Using sworn testimony and his observations of the court case, Breslin explores the character and methods of Kaplan and his associates, men who killed without regret. The journalist says that their Mafia world is now impoverished, as government run lotteries have taken away most of their business. Most of today's mobsters are losers who don't like to do real work. Being a man who enjoyed work and pinching a penny, Kaplan manipulated the mob well without being a "made member" for years.

True crime readers will enjoy Breslin's entertaining and economic prose.

Breslin, Jimmy. The Good Rat: A True Story. Harper Collins, 2008. 270p. ISBN 9780060856663.

Pulitzer Prize for Biography Publishers, 1917-2007

I have been working on my biography book again. Actually, I never stop. Right now I am going through all the lists of awards given to biographies. When I cut and paste all the authors and titles from the Pulitzer Prize for Biography list, I am left with just years and publishers names in the original document. It looks pretty cool, all the bold dates among the publisher names. It also pretty interesting to see how frequently some publishers' names appear. The more recent dates are links that will take you to book titles and prize amounts. If you want to analyze this information, feel free.

1917 (Houghton) 1918 (Putnam) 1919 (Houghton) 1920 (Houghton) 1921 (Scribner) 1922 (Macmillan) 1923 (Houghton) 1924 (Scribner) 1925 (Little) 1926 (Oxford Univ. Press) 1927 (Knopf) 1928 (Doubleday) 1929 (Houghton) 1930 (Bobbs) 1931 (Houghton) 1932 (Harcourt) 1933 (Dodd) 1934 (Dodd) 1935 (Scribner) 1936 (Little) 1937 (Dodd) 1938 (Little) 1938 (Bobbs) 1939 (Viking) 1940 (Doubleday) 1941 (Macmillan) 1942 (Lippincott) 1943 (Little) 1944 (Knopf) 1945 (Knopf) 1946 (Knopf) 1947 (Macmillan) 1948 (Little) 1949 (Harper) 1950 (Knopf) 1951 (Houghton) 1952 (Macmillan) 1953 (Harvard Univ. Press) 1954 (Scribner) 1955 (Harper) 1956 (Oxford Univ. Press) 1957 (Harper) 1958 (Scribner) 1959 (Longmans) 1960 (Little) 1961 (Knopf) 1962 no award 1963 (Lippincott) 1964 (Harvard Univ. Press) 1965 (Harvard Univ. Press) 1966. (Houghton) 1967 (Simon & Schuster) 1968 (Little) 1969 (Oxford Univ. Press) 1970 (Knopf) 1971 (Holt) 1972 (Norton) 1973 (Scribner) 1974 (Little) 1975 (Knopf) 1976 (Harper) 1977 (Little, Brown) 1978 (Harcourt) 1979 (Macmillan) 1980 (Coward, McCann) 1981 (Knopf) 1982 (Norton) 1983 (Congdon & Weed) 1984 (Oxford U. Press) 1985 (Harper & Row) 1986 (Alfred A. Knopf) 1987 (William Morrow) 1988 (Little, Brown and Company) 1989 (Alfred A. Knopf) 1990 (Princeton University Press) 1991 (Clarkson N. Potter) 1992. (Grove Weidenfeld) 1993 (Simon & Schuster) 1994 (Henry Holt) 1995 (Oxford University Press) 1996 (Alfred A. Knopf) 1997 (Scribner) 1998 Alfred A. Knopf) 1999 (G.P. Putnam's Sons) 2000 (Random House) 2001 (Henry Holt and Company 2002 (Simon & Schuster) 2003 (Alfred A. Knopf) 2004 (W.W. Norton) 2005 (Alfred A. Knopf). 2006 (Alfred A. Knopf) 2007 (Doubleday)

Profiles in Courage by John F. Kennedy

Readers of Profiles in Courage by John F. Kennedy will realize that there is another rarely mentioned loss due to his assassination in 1963 - he did not write more books. Known as an engaging speaker, he also wrote well and had five books to his credit. As youngest president, he might have had many years of writing after his administration. Of course, that is only speculation, as he also had many serious physical problems. He might have died young anyway. He did not get the chance and we will never know.

Profiles in Courage was Kennedy's best known book. In it, he praises the courage of eight U.S. senators, many of whom he would have disagreed with politically. Each of these men risked their political careers to support unpopular positions in which they believed. The first was John Quincy Adams who broke rank with his Federalist colleagues to support President Jefferson's embargo of British goods in retaliation to impressment of American sailors. He also tells stories about Daniel Webster, Thomas Hart Benton, Sam Houston, Edmund G. Ross, Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar, George Norris, and Robert A. Taft. For all, the struggle was voting according to their conscience or according to the directives of their parties and constituents.

Sometimes, the personal details struck me as very interesting. I know that it is very obvious, but I had never realized before that John Quincy Adams, who was the son of a president and lived to be very old, knew Benjamin Franklin and George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas.

In his introduction, Kennedy said something very interesting about party politics of his time:

"The two-party system remains not because both are rigid but because both are flexible. The Republican Party when I entered Congress was big enough to hold, for example, both Robert Taft and Wayne Morse - and the Democratic side of the Senate in which I now serve can happily embrace, for example, Harry Byrd and Wayne Morse."

What Kennedy implied was that there was not much real difference in the parties. There was more difference in the people who served within the parties. While that seems to have changed much in the fifty years since the publication of Profiles in Courage, it is still difficult to go against the dictates of one's party.

I had to look up Morse, who turns out to have been a progressive who left the Republican Party in protest over Eisenhower choosing Nixon as his vice president candidate in 1952. He served in the Senate as an independent for several years and then ran against Kennedy for the Democratic nomination for president in 1960.

I first read Profiles in Courage on the couch in my grandmother's house in the late 1960s. It is just as good now.

Kennedy, John F. Profiles in Courage. Harper & Brothers, 1956.

Andrew Keen: Provocateur and Nothing More: A LibrarianInBlack Report

The LibrarianInBlack attended a symposium at the University of California-Berkeley called "Is the Web a Threat to Our Culture?" The two speakers were Andrew Keen, author of Cult of the Amateur, and Paul Duguid, an adjunct professor at the UCB School of Information. Sarah quickly produced a lengthy and thought-provoking account of the evening, including questions from the audience and her own thoughts. Librarians interested in the impact of technology on their work will find the account helpful. I recommend her report.

Chasing Kangaroos: A Continent, A Scientist, and a Search for the World's Most Extraordinary Creature by Tim Flannery

We live in the Age of Kangaroos, a time when roos dominate the plains, deserts, and forests, if you recognize an Australian perspective. (If you do, you probably also like the world maps with the South Pole at the top.) We missed the Age of the Koalas and the Age of Wombats, when large creates browsed and grazed across the island continent. The evidence is in the fossils discovered by Tim Flannery, author of Chasing Kangaroos: A Continent, A Scientist, and a Search for the World's Most Extraordinary Creature.

In this part-memoir/part-kangaroo history, Flannery tells us how a natural scientist seeks evidence of species both living and long dead to complete an evolutionary understanding of a continental ecosystem. Though much of the work is out in the field, some of the methods will surprise you. Early in his career, Flannery was taught by British paleontologists that the easiest way to find fossils in Australia is head to the local pub for a pint of strong brew. Look behind the bar and you'll usually find a row of interesting rocks and bones. The bartender will tell you who found them and where to head. Take some bottles to go, for it will be hot where he sends you.

Flannery also has some unique fossil cleaning skills. When fearful that his tools might break a small specimen, he pops it in his mouth and lets his tongue work at removing ancient grit.

Flannery has been successful in his work, having identified and named four Australian species of tree kangaroos. His book is also entertaining and insightful. Look for it in your library.

Flannery, Tim. Chasing Kangaroos: A Continent, A Scientist, and a Search for the World's Most Extraordinary Creature. Grove Press, 2007. ISBN 9780802118523.

The Times Club in Iowa City

The Times Club
Originally uploaded by ricklibrarian.

Iowa City is literarily a pretty interesting place. I knew about the Iowa Writer's Workshop, which began in 1936. Scores of famous novelists, poets, playwrights, essayists, and nonfiction authors have attended the workshop. I did not know about the Times Club until I read about it in an exhibit about the Writer's Workshop in the basement of the Old State Capitol. We then found the room in the Prairie Lights Bookstore. It is now a coffee shop and deli, which is somewhat in keeping with the history of the room that was visited by the likes of Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg, Langston Hughes, and e. e. cummings, as well as artists like Thomas Hart Benton and Grant Wood. The room is a historically inspiring place to read.

The Prairie Lights Bookstore has racks full of famous author postcards for sale. I have not seen them anywhere else.

Off with Their Heads! A Cover Art Mystery Stalks the Book World by Nara Schoenberg, Chicago Tribune

I was always told not to cut off feet when taking photos. It is a rule that probably goes back to nineteenth century studio portraits of ladies and gentlemen, politicians, generals, and outlaws. I was told that it was alarming or at least awkward to view people whose legs ended somewhere just above their ankles. According to this thinking, a photo without a head would be shocking. Well, look at the book covers of many recent novels for a shock.

According to Nara Schoenberg of the Chicago Tribune in her article "Off with Their Heads! A Cover Art Mystery Stalks the Book World" in the Wednesday, March 12, 2008 issue of the newspaper, the headless woman is a fad in cover art for fiction. Her article includes ten examples for readers to see. The cover of Fourth Comings by Megan McCafferty shows a young woman in high boots slouching on a couch. The paperback of The View from Castle Rock by Alice Munro has a headless woman on a towel on a beach. Prama by Jamie Ponti shows three headless teens in prom dresses. Even the historical novel Jane Boleyn by Julia Fox shows a woman in Tudor dress only up to the neck.

"Why?" Schoenberg asks. Of course, being a journalist she asks people in the book marketing industry, and many reasons are offered. One of the most interesting explanations is that without the face, readers (mostly women) can more easily imagine themselves as the heroine.

Where are the headless men? Schoenberg says that a few they can be found on some of steamy romance paperbacks.

Now I have something else to do at PLA in late March. Instead of asking vendors about database features and the best button makers, I'll be looking for headless book cover art.

The World Without Us by Alan Weisman

A drive into Chicago in March will collaborate the message of The World Without Us by Alan Weisman. The expressway is pitted with potholes. The train trestles are rusted. The windows are all broken in abandoned factories. Brush is growing behind the warehouses. Houses need painting. Shingles need replacing. Everything is trying to return to a natural state. Without people maintaining the architecture, the prairies and woodlands would soon return.

Weisman has done a lot of thinking about what would happen to the earth if people disappeared, and his conclusion is that the planet would adapt and survive. Many of the plants and animals that depend on humans for their existence (pets, farm animals, rats, hybrid crops, etc.) would also soon disappear, but wild species would recover. In some ways, the planet would benefit greatly, and the sooner the better. The role of humans on the planet is that of virus, and the earth is seeking a cure.

The author's descriptions of the earth without us almost make the reader wish it would happen. That is not his intention. The point is that the forces of nature have these tendencies and we should work with instead of against them.

Weisman includes some warnings:

• When a major earthquake hits Istanbul, the destruction will be worse than when the hurricane hit New Orleans.
• Plastic debris is breaking up into tiny bits that choke microorganisms and are threatening the food chain.
• All of the atomic power plants will become like volcanoes if they are abandoned.

Near the end of the book, the author offers some prescriptions for a sustainable future with humans. The largest point is that the human population needs to be managed and reduced dramatically.

Reading The World Without Us is like seeing the earth from space for the first time and it will change many readers. It would make a great discussion book. It should be in every public library collection.

Weisman, Alan. The World Without Us. Thomas Dunne Books, 2007. ISBN 9780312347291

Volver: a Film by Pedro Almodovar

Do you believe in ghosts? Raimunda (Penelope Cruz) does not. She is a modern women trying to raise a daughter in a culture that persists in its superstitions. Even a move to the city has not helped her escape in the Spanish film Volver by director Pedro Almodovar. Yet, there is a mystery that she can not explain, if only she will notice.

Volver is a film about women. The initial scene is a cemetery full of old and young women polishing tombs and headstones. There is not a man to be seen there nor in the next several scenes. I began to wonder if the whole movie would be devoid of men. They seemed very irrelevant to the plot. I eventually I realized that it was the sins of men that created all the problems that the women in this film suffered. The only sympathetically portrayed male is a young man from a film company who hires Raimunda to serve the film crew lunch.

Throughout Volver are touches of Alfred Hitchcock. The way Raimundo mops up the blood from around a body and the way she throws the corpse into a freezer remind me of Psycho. The way the plot slowly reveals itself reminds me of Rear Window. How the director makes something real out of something that could not be suggests Vertigo.

When looking at the cover, disregard the claim that the film is a comedy. It is a very serious film with a few humorous movements. There are some story elements that will disturb sensitive viewers near the ending.

I am pleased to see many libraries in my area already own the DVD. I recommend it highly.

Major League Baseball vs Bloggers: A Librarian's Perspective

Nolan Ryan Pitching to Ryne Sandburg
Originally uploaded by ricklibrarian.

I posted this photo of Nolan Ryan pitching to Ryan Sandburg on this blog once before. The reaction to it was "Wow, two hall-of-famers! I wish I had been at the game." That is a natural fan reaction, and my posting the photo is free marketing for Major League Baseball. What could be wrong with that?

In his column in the Chicago Tribune on Wednesday, March 5, Internet critic Steve Johnson reported that Major League Baseball is ready to clamp down on bloggers, who they think are stealing from them when they blog about the games that they attend. According to Johnson, they are following the misguided lead of the National Football League. MLB seems most concerned about photos. Johnson reports from sports industry sources that the league will restrict bloggers to posting seven game related photos from a game AND they must be taken down within 72 hours.

Who would ever want to take a photo down? The fact that MLB is letting any posting at all must mean there is debate within the ranks of the executives. Someone there must see how fans naturally want to share their excitement. The bloggers are their friends, if they would only realize it, but greed has blinded their eyes.

This makes me think about library conferences. Association executives could take the viewpoint that bloggers should be repressed. "Why let someone who did not pay for the conference know what was said?" Fortunately, librarians love to share and are concerned with the education and development of the whole profession, including those who can not afford to attend conferences. Reports from conferences do make some want to attend subsequent events.

Librarians should count their blessings that they do not have to contend with the millionaires and billionaires of Major League Baseball. They're no fun anymore.

Members of my family will be in Arizona soon and are attending a Cubs spring training game. I am not getting to go this time, but I look forward to seeing fan photos on Flickr. There are lots of fan photos on Flickr. Don't tell MLB.

The Warmest Room in the House: How the Kitchen Became the Heart of the Twentieth-Century American Home by Steven Gdula

Butter was once a USDA food group, according to The Warmest Room in the House: How the Kitchen Became the Heart of the Twentieth-Century American Home by Steven Gdula, a microhistory of 20th century American food culture. Though I can not seem to find the statement now, I am sure he said that butter was the eighth of eight groups and that the USDA said that you needed to eat some every day (at least until margarine was invented).

There are many other startling statements in the book. On page 84, Gdula quotes FDA Commissioner George Larrick, who in 1956 said, "Our industry will not have done its job until housewives buy most of their meals as packaged, ready-to-serve items." That was government policy in support of corporate agriculture.

Though the author says that the kitchen is the topic of The Warmest Room in the House, the focus seems broader to me. How the kitchen transformed from a hellishly-hot sinkhole to a shiny, comfortable room where you entertain guests is one of the major plots, but there are many others. He chronicles trends in meat eating and vegetarianism, the appliance industry, government food regulation, the restaurant industry, and food habits displayed through motion pictures and television. He also concentrates on the history of cookbooks and the home economics movement, as well as diet crazes through the century.

That is a lot to cover in 209 pages. Gluda's text is economic in that he tells his stories relatively quickly and then tells more. I especially enjoyed reading about the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, mentally reliving my childhood through food memories.

Gluda's book is packed with provocative details and would be a good discussion book.

Gdula, Steven. The Warmest Room in the House: How the Kitchen Became the Heart of the Twentieth-Century American Home. Bloomsbury, 2008. ISBN 9781582343556

Finding Grace: The Face of America's Homeless: Photographs by Lynn Blodgett

I have mixed feeling about the new book Finding Grace: The Face of America's Homeless, a big photo collection by Lynn Blodgett. To its credit, it is large and impossible to miss as it sits on the new book display. Within its pages are between ninety and a hundred portraits of people from outside shelters across the United States, many from warmer states like Arizona or California. An introduction by Marian Wright Edelman gives a quick report on homelessness in our country, which should help spread the message that the homeless need help.

What bothers me is the selection of subjects and some of the photographs. Blodgett tells in his postscript how he asked some of the subjects to remove coats and shirts to get striking photos, showing the true person. The result is some very scary photos. I have not seen people who look this menacing at the shelters where I have volunteered. I can imagine some people would think twice before going into a room with these people. I do not think Blodgett meant to do this. Perhaps his sense of photographic art mislead his sense of mission.

Edelman in her introduction and Blodgett in his postscript highlight that there are many children and families seeking shelter and food, and the photographer does include some photos of families and children. There are also a few photos of people who do not look homeless at all. I wish there were more of these, as I think they represent a larger portion of the people in need than Blodgett has allotted.

The book might be good for discussions. I am sure people will disagree with me.

Blodgett, Lynn. Finding Grace: The Face of America's Homeless. Earth Aware, 2007. ISBN 9781601091055

The Long Road Home: A Story of War and Family by Martha Raddatz

The Long Road Home by ABC news correspondent Martha Raddatz is not a book for sensitive readers. It is a graphic, profane, and yet respectful account of what was expected to be another routine day of peacekeeping in Sadr City, Iraq.

On April 4, 2004, as the U.S. 1st Cavalry prepared to start its year of patrols, Mahdi militia attacked a lightly armored patrol that had been escorting a fleet of trucks carry human fecal matter. Totally surprised, the soldiers found themselves blocked from returning to base. After their transports were disabled, they dashed down an alley and broke into a home to await their rescue. Several squads that then tried quickly to rescue the soldiers found more streets filled with debris to impede their efforts. They were attacked by well-armed militia shooting from rooftops, windows, and alley ways. By the time the incident was over, eight American soldiers and countless Iraqi militia and citizens were dead.

I listened to Long Road Home on audiobook, dramatically read by Joyce Bean. I doubt that the print reading experience is quite as startling. The first disc sets the story up, including the accounts of families back at Fort Hood in Texas. The next five discs tell the battle story, and the final two discs tell of the mop up, of medical treatments, and about the procedures for the informing of family members of the casualties.

In the hardcover book, there are pictures that are missing, of course, from the audiobook. Some are rather sad to see after hearing the story.

In telling this story, Raddatz spares no feelings and offers no opinions. She lets the reader decide the merits of the U.S. occupation. The closest she comes to analysis is the final statement: "Moqtada Al-Sadr continues to be a significant problem for U.S. forces in Iraq, as he gains both political and military power through his armed militia."

Raddatz, Martha. The Long Road Home: A Story of War and Family. G. Putnam's Sons, 2007. ISBN 9780399153822

audiobook, 8 compact discs: Tantor, p2007. ISBN 9781400104468

Jeeves Intervenes: A Play from First Folio

When the eager-to-wed Gertrude Winklesworth-Bode thinks that you have potential (i.e. you are spineless, defenseless, and malleable to her designs), you need someone with a bit of gray matter to save your sweaty neck. When Sir Rupert Watlington-Pipps is threatening to cut off your allowance and send you to the jute farms of India, you need someone with a talent for strategy. If you are Bertie Wooster and his pathetic friend Eustice Bassington-Bassington (pronounced baa-sington bay-sington), you turn to the greatest of British superheroes - (pause for dramatic effect) - Jeeves.

Based loosely on the P. G. Wodehouse short story "Jeeves and the Hard-Boiled Egg," Jeeves Intervenes is classic comic theater. Bonnie and I attended a very intimate performance of the First Folio Shakespeare Festival performance on Friday night at the Mayslake Peabody Estate in Oak Brook, Illinois. The stage was set for the six-character play in the old estate's wood-paneled library. With the stage at one end of the room and risers wall-to-wall, about eighty were seated for the play. Always smart, Bonnie had gotten our tickets in advance online. There were no empty seats.

The entire cast was top drawer. I think we had seen all of them in other First Folio productions. We were laughing nearly the moment the lights went up. Jim McCance as Jeeves calmly stepped forward with solutions to impossible problems just in the nick of time. Christian Gray was just the wastrel that Bertie should be, and Kevin McKillip was hilarious as his dim-witted friend Eustace.

I would recommend that you go, but the last performance was yesterday. What I can recommend is that you try other First Folio productions, especially the summer Shakespeare performances. We've been going for years.

You can find the original "Jeeves and the Hard-Boiled Egg" online at Classic Reader.