In the Woods and other fun stuff

I just recently finished the fairly new book, In the Woods by Tana French.  I had seen this book displayed in a Barnes and Noble, read the synopses, and immediately felt the need to read it.  It had a very promising plot line: In 1984, three 12-year-old friends go missing in the woods of Knocknaree, Ireland.  One boy is found clinging to a tree with blood in his shoes and no memory of what happened to himself and his friends.  His two friends were never found.  The book takes place over 20 years later where this boy is now a 30-something detective who gets assigned to a murder case in Knocknaree.  There are pieces of evidence found that connect back to his 1984 case.  The detective struggles throughout the book with trying to remember the events that happened in the woods, as well as struggling with his current difficult case. This book had suspense, an intricate plot, poetic language, and… the worst ending I have ever read.  Without giving away too much detail, the worst thing you can do to a character as a writer-worst than killing them off- is set them up to be a very real, human, compassionate character that is very identifiable to the reader.  Then, make their life completely miserable and end the book without any hope or resolution for the reader to hold onto, “Sorry, but that’s the way life goes sometimes.  You can’t always get what you want!”  This is exactly what French did with this book and I was left feeling extremely empty at the end. If you (for some reason) feel a desire to read this book, we unfortunately do not have this book at Snell Library.  I didn’t want to pay the $14 at Barnes and Noble, so I ordered it through the Virtual Catalog. As I promised in a previous post on library school, I will post my websites for all to see with the same warning: I am not a very good website-maker! Tricia’s Writing And as a bonus, my final site for the same Web Design class!: All About Fred!

Changing Reading Habits?

I just read an interesting piece from the latest Atlantic Monthly, entitled Is Google Making Us Stupid? The author, Nicholas Carr, observes that he and colleagues have all noticed a change in their reading habits — an inability to concentrate or focus when reading texts longer than a page or two. I’ve noticed this myself — I’ve become far more distractible when reading, especially when reading online, where I may link from article to article without ever finishing one. Or I may skip one entirely, dismissing it as “too long,” if it involves more than one full scrolling of the screen. When and how did this happen? Since when is a two-page article “too long”? It bothers me that I find it so difficult to sit down and pay attention to a book for any length of time these days (unless it’s a really compelling book, and I do still find some of those around, luckily) — I’m a librarian, after all! 🙂 Have others noticed this phenomenon? Does it bother you, and if so, have you found ways to overcome it? (And if it doesn’t bother you, why not?)

Today’s Bloomsday!

Ulysses June 16, the day Joyce’s “Ulysses” takes place, is the time to have a Guiness, re-read your favorite passages (also here) or, if you’re near a radio or computer tonight, listen to WBAI in New York which is broadcasting some passages read aloud, along with period music. In the Boston area, there’s a festival on the Boston College Campus, and another at Back Pages Books in Waltham. The NU Libraries (PR 6019 .O9 on the Snell Third Floor) have several copies, along with essays, readers companions, adaptations, and so on nearby.

Conference Twittering

Observation: Three pages worth of twitters…not so much fun to read, not informative. It’s like reading a couple thousand lines of chat backlog. I signed up for Twitter when I read that SLA (Special Library Assocation) had set up an account for backchannel chatter at this year’s conference. Sounded fine to me, but I think in practice, it’s just too much. BUT. I could see where it would be fun if you were keeping up with specific friends and colleagues at a conference or other large event because in those cases, I’d *care* about their flights and how long they are waiting for a table at a restaurant. Random people I don’t know…not so much. I wonder how many pages of conference twitters will accumlate tomorrow, after it’s in full swing! I haven’t heard about using Twitter for conferences, not sure how well it’s worked or what other people have thought about it. Perhaps people like myself will just lurk and mostly not read the posts while a few groups take better advantage of it.

Green Print

I read about Green Print in Popular Science. It is software that you can download (Buy) and it will help you save on those annoying print outs that have only one useless line of text. Here is the URL: http://printgreener.com/index.html Here is the URL for the flash demo: http://printgreener.com/tutorial.html This could be one of those things that can make a big difference in student’s lives, conserving page prints within the 400 page limit.