Week 11 prompt response: I have to admit I'm a little against eBooks and audiobooks, but only for myself! I don't find them appealing but if that is how someone else chooses to take in their books, that's fine by me. At least they're reading in some way. The reason I prefer paper books is because of the appeal factors: I don't have to stare at a screen, I can read at my own pace, I can dog-ear pages, I can mark passages. I also prefer the aesthetic appeal of paper books. I like looking at different editions and covers. I like discovering the different layouts and the choices made when publishing. If people don't mind losing the appeal factors of tactile books, then it's okay if they read eBooks or listen to audio books. Being able to change the font or color of the text seems to detract from the author's vision. They worked hard (probably in conjunction with their publisher) to lay out the book in a certain way so that a certain meaning or feeling is...
Posts
Historical Fiction Annotation: Author: Geraldine Brooks Title: March Genre: Historical fiction Publication date: 2005 Number of pages: 280 Geographical setting: Southern United States and Massachusetts Time period: During the civil war 1860s with flashback to earlier times (1840s or so) Plot summary: This book is sort of an alternative take on Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. It follows the father of the March family when he went to help with the war effort by serving as chaplain to the troops. The book opens on the Battle of Ball's Bluff and from there it follows Mr. March around the southern U.S. After the battle, March is assigned to a plantation owned by Ethan Canning who is harvesting cotton with newly freed slaves who work for wages. March is there to help Canning but ends up helping in other ways by teaching the freed people their "letters" and other subjects like geography which they were previously forbidden to learn...
Book Club Experience: For my book club experience, I attended a club meeting at the library where I work. It is a club that meets regularly (once a month) to discuss a predetermined book. One of my coworkers from the reference department (I’m in circulation) organizes the club meetings and chooses the book. Extra copies of the book are obtained through interlibrary loan so that club participants do not need to purchase the book, which is one great thing about having the club meet at the library. I did tell the club members that I was observing their meeting for a class assignment just so that everyone knew why I was there and why I was not actively participating. Some of the members recognized me from the library anyway, so I felt it was easier to tell them. The book they were discussing was Eighty Days: Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland’s History-Making Race Around the World by Matthew Goodman. It is a nonfiction book about the two Victorian era female journalists ...
Special Topics Paper Summary: For my special topics paper, I decided to focus on the horror genre. I wanted to highlight what was important about the genre as well as what makes horror its own genre separate from others. In the first part of my paper, I talk about the appeal and the characteristics of horror like the setting (classic settings like haunted houses or dark woods) the pacing (usually quick with abrupt turns), the characters (loners, evil people, normal people in crazy situations), the style (how authors will use different fonts and book setups to further immerse readers), and story lines (horror usually follows the evil on the surface but also the deeper questions about human nature tackled within horror). The second part of my paper focuses on the history of horror from the early tracings of the genre (early legends and classic works like Beowulf ) to the modern day zombie and post-apocalyptical aspects. I talk about classic authors like Mary Shelley and Edgar Allen P...
Sci-Fi Annotation: Author: Philip K. Dick Title: A Maze of Death Genre: Sci-fi Publication date: 1970 Number of pages: 190 Geographical setting: Fictional planets: Tekel Upharsin and Delmark-O Time period: In the distant future after Earth is deemed uninhabitable. Plot summary: This book follows fourteen people who have been "reassigned" to a planet called Delmark-O. While each character seems integral to the story, the main character is Seth Morley, a marine biologist. Morley and his wife are reassigned to Delmark-O after Morley prays for a transfer. The prayer is processed by the Interprocessor (One part of a future religion founded by a man named Specktowsky who wrote a book called How I Rose From the Dead in My Spare Time and So Can You , the future Bible equivalent) and Morley and his wife make their way to their newly assigned planet. When they arrive they meet the others, people with various jobs and seemingly nothing in common. N...
Week 7 Prompt Response: I'd like to respond to the article 5 Hoax Memoirs Still Worth Reading https://www.barnesandnoble.com/blog/5-hoax-memoirs-still-worth-reading/ I'm glad that someone else out there shares my views about these books. I've always maintained that they are still worth reading, they just have to be read as fiction and not fact, just like the article says. I have A Million Little Pieces and Go Ask Alice on my shelves to read. I think they can still be fascinating stories, as long as you start reading them with the knowledge that they aren't true. It also adds another aspect to the book when you know the author fabricated parts of it. In that way, it can read like an entirely different book with the reader trying to understand why the author felt the need to lie to their audience. Even the book mentioned in the first paragraph, The Awful Disclosures , sounds interesting to me and I would still read it knowing that it is all made up. It also makes y...
Week 6 Prompt Response: I think the best way to promote horror books at my library would be with a catchy display. My library usually has at least four displays for books going at any one time and the patrons really seem to respond positively to them and regularly check out materials from them. Since I have worked there, I haven't seen a horror display specifically. I think it would be great to have a horror display at a time that's not Halloween since horror can be read at any time and its fans tend to be pretty devout. So a horror display at any time of year could be eye-catching and popular. I was exploring Pinterest and found some very cool ideas. I really like the ones that change the overall shape of the display like the haunted house one below. I was thinking maybe a coffin shaped display with horizontal shelves would be really cool and could be used for a scary movie display or a Halloween prop at a later time. Here are pictures from Pinterest of my favorite horror di...