Tuesday, October 30, 2007

America's Game

Yesterday I finished reading "America's Game" by Michael MacCambridge. It was about--you guessed it--pro football and how it has surpassed baseball to become America's best loved sport. Why do I like football better? While I enjoy watching baseball in person, on TV it just isn't as exciting. There's something primitive about football: watching grown men slam each other into the mud. In a world of Oprah-tized men who are encouraged to show their "feelings", football takes us back to their cave men like roots, and I must admit, I like it. Maybe it's not politically correct, but it's true. And this was a great book about great men playing a great game, full of fun details and interesting tidbits.

Friday, October 26, 2007

Don't Bet Against Me!

This morning I finished reading "Don't Bet Against Me!" by Deanna Favre, wife of Green Bay Packer's amazing quarterback Brett. She recently battled breast cancer, and was brave enough to share her private pain with us in the hopes of educating other women about this disease. I always thought Deanna was very lucky to have Brett, but now I realize it's the other way around. I hope he thanks God every day for that woman, because she's something great. I really enjoyed this book, full of hope and love.

Thursday, October 25, 2007

Jude the Obscure

Today I finished reading "Jude the Obscure" by Thomas Hardy. Irving mentioned Hardy so much in "A Prayer for Owen Meany" that I decided to read something by him. This was a very sad book, and in part 6 came a horrible twist I didn't see coming a mile away (although I probably should have). Basically, the main character, Jude, and his cousin/love, Sue, never find contentment and happiness, and this book is a story of their struggle not only to do the "right" thing based on the morals of the day, but also to just be happy. It was an easy read, but very depressing.

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

NFL's Greatest

This morning I finished reading "NFL's Greatest" by Phil Barber. It was basically a collection of NFL's 100 greatest players (in alphabetical order); 25 greatest teams (in chronological order); 25 greatest games (chronological order); and 25 greatest events (also in chronological order). It was a fun book of facts and trivia, with lots of great full color pictures. My appetite for football related books has only just been whetted. I want more!

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

The Marshall Story

This morning I finished reading "The Marshall Story", which was written by four different reporters. I have not yet seen the movie "We Are Marshall", but this book was written after the movie was filmed. I'm interested to see if they took as much dramatic license with this story as they did with "Friday Night Lights".
Anyway, while it was an interesting story, the subtitle was a bit misleading. It says "college football's greatest comeback". To me, a comeback is a year or two, right? Well, what happened at Marshall University was that in 1970 a very tragic plane crash killed most of the football team, coaches, and friends and fans. Now, this was not a winning team to begin with: they hadn't had a winning season in 5 years and in fact in 1969 had been kicked out of the MAC conference for shady recruiting practices. Marshall made the decision to try to rebuild the team, which was undoubtedly very difficult. They went on to have many, many losing seasons before they finally began winning again...in 1994! Twenty-four years after the plane crash. I'm sorry...does this qualify as a comeback? Really? Once they started winning, they won big, and it was an uplifting and inspiring story. I just think that it's a stretch to call it a great comeback. Give any team a quarter of a century and they can rebuild their team, no matter what has happened to them. A lot of great players played for Marshall in recent years, like Randy Moss (who has said publicly that the Marshall tragedy was no big deal--yikes). I remember when he first started playing for the Vikings. I always hated Vikings/Packers games because they always won against the Packers, and I hated that!! No denying he's a good player, though. With that being said--Go Green Bay!! (They're my team, have been since '97). Okay, I'm officially in full on football season mode. I wonder what else is out there that I can read pertaining to football...?

Monday, October 22, 2007

One Drop

On Saturday I finished reading "One Drop" by Bliss Broyard. It's a story about a young woman who finds out as her father is dying that he was partly black, but because he was so light skinned he lived, or, "passed", as white. She sets out to find her relatives that her father cut out of his life, and his friends from when he was younger, in a quest to discover for herself just how black she is. It turns out, not much, less that 20%. It was an interesting story, with a good overview of the history of race in the deep South. One of the things I liked best about it was, Bliss would question newly found cousins who had lived their whole lives as black as to what they would call her, and they would always say "Bliss" rather than "white" or "black" or "biracial". One of her father's old friends said he didn't understand why Anatole (her father) made such a big deal about race; everyone knew he was part black and didn't make a big deal over it or care. Does finding out at the age of 23 that your father was part black mean you're a different person than you thought you were? I don't think so. I do understand her frustration with her father for denying her the opportunity to know her relatives on his side of the family, but I understand where he was coming from. It was a different time (he was born in 1920), and unfortunately blacks were not treated as fairly as they should have been, and in some parts of the country, still aren't. One of the amazing things about this country is that no one is really purely one race or another anymore. We're all mixed up, and it makes us stronger. Mutts are always healthier than purebreds. If we all had our DNA tested like she did, I bet some of us would be pretty surprised when we learned the results! I'm curious myself as to how mine would turn out.

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Jane Eyre

Today I finished reading "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Bronte. It was really good, easier to understand than Austen, I thought. I see how a lot of books have been influenced by her style and plot. It's a story of a orphaned girl who leaves an unhappy life at a boarding school and goes on to be a governess for a little girl at Thornfield Manor. While there, she falls in love with the owner of the manor and the little girl's guardian, Mr. Rochester. It was really a page turner. I couldn't wait to see what happened next, and Jane Eyre is an inspiring heroine.

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Water for Elephants

This afternoon I finished reading "Water for Elephants" by Sara Gruen. I've wanted to read it for awhile now, but after my hairstylist Roni raved about it I knew I had to read it sooner rather than later, and I'm glad I did. It had a little more violence towards animals than I like to think about in it, but in the end justice is served. It's about a circus in the beginning of the Great Depression, featuring a wonderful elephant named Rosie. It would make a really great movie, and it had a nice, happy ending, which actually seemed plausible.

Friday Night Lights

Last night I finished reading "Friday Night Lights" by H. G. Bissinger. I love football: I love watching football, I love reading about football. This was a great story about a high school football team in Odessa, Texas, named the Permian Panthers, and their attempt to make it to the state championship in 1988. In a town like Odessa, there isn't much to look forward to except for football, and the Panthers would often draw crowds of up to 20,000 people on a Friday night. People would wait in line for two days to get tickets. To a high school football game. Can you even begin to imagine that? I can't. The pressure these kids were under is staggering. It's a compelling and gripping story, full of tension and obsession.

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Getting Your Grant

On Sunday (I know, I'm a few days behind--sorry) I finished reading "Getting Your Grant: a how to do it manual for libraries" by Peggy Barber. Again, another school book (I have to read something for fun soon!!), but it was pretty interesting. The main thing, I think, to remember if you are applying for a grant is to ask for help. Everyone seemed to want to help everyone else write the grant, apply for the grant, etc. If I ever have to apply for a grant, I will ask for help.

Saturday, October 13, 2007

Creating the Customer Driven Library

This morning I finished reading "Creating the Customer Driven Library" by Jeanette Woodward. Even though it was a recommended reading book for class, I found it interesting and informative. She has a lot of practical, thoughtful ideas on how to improve on what the library already does best without sacrificing its integrity. She suggests that libraries can learn a lot from what bookstores have done, but doesn't suggest that libraries turn into bookstores. After spending 5 years in bookstore hell, I heartily agree with this. I don't want the library to turn into a bookstore, and I don't think the loyal library patrons do, either. Why risk alienating our core clientele in the hopes of attracting others? It doesn't make sense to me.

Tuesday, October 9, 2007

Wise Blood

This morning I finished reading "Wise Blood" by Flannery O'Connor. It wasn't really long enough at 120 pages to be a book; more like a novella. I have read a lot of her short stories, but none of her books, and while talking with Jenn at the reference desk last Friday, she got me thinking about O'Connor and I decided to read some of her longer stories. This one was about a young man named Hazel who seems to deliberately make life harder for himself than it needs to be. It was full of shady characters, like his landlady who only wants to marry him for his government pension, and a zoo guard who seems creepy and evasive. O'Connor was influenced by Faulkner, and it shows. Reading O'Connor, like reading Faulkner, is like looking at an iceberg: you only see the tip and you have to figure out the rest. I liked it, and am looking forward to reading the rest of her work.

Faulkner's Oxford

Last night I finished reading "Faulkner's Oxford" by Herman E. Taylor. Taylor had the luck to grow up in Oxford, Mississippi, and knew Faulkner's stepchildren. This book was a collection of his memories of talking to the great writer, as well as what Oxford was like when he and Faulkner were young. You have to be a real Faulkner nut (like myself) to be interested in knowing more about the people and places that inspired Faulkner, but if you are, this was an interesting book with lots of pictures of what Oxford used to look like as well as what it did look like when Taylor published the book in 1990.

Monday, October 8, 2007

A Prayer for Owen Meany

Last night I finished reading "A Prayer for Owen Meany" by John Irving. It was very good; I liked it a lot. I thought it was very interesting how Irving kept emphasizing how as an English teacher to high school students, John Wheelwright couldn't get them to understand how authors give hints in the beginning of books, and then Irving turns around and gave us hints all throughout the book as to how it would end. It was one of those books when you finish it, you have an "aha!" moment where everything ties together. I'm not a really big fan of putting so much negativity toward politics in a fiction book, especially since it really didn't help the plot much (as far as I could see; he could have left it all out and it wouldn't have made a difference. It just feels like he's trying to advance his own agenda) but other than that the characters were great (I wish I could hear Owen Meany's voice, just once), and the story was original and engaging.

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

To Kill a Mockingbird

Last night I finished rereading Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird" in preparation for my library's Big Read kickoff this Friday. I haven't read this book in years, and had forgotten how good it is. Harper Lee is such a great storyteller; it's sad that she only had one book in her, but if you're going to write just one, then this is the one to be remembered for. Even though it took place almost 80 years ago (and was written almost 60 years ago), the issues are still just as relevant today. She really makes you see the world through many different perspectives, by listening to Atticus, Scout, Aunt Alexandra, Jem, and all the others. Atticus is a very wise man, and we would all do well to take a page out of his book.

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

The Water-Babies

Today I finished reading "The Water-Babies" by Charles Kingsley. It was very popular 150 years ago, when it was first published, but it reminded me of "Alice in Wonderland", which I didn't like, so, consequently, I really didn't care for this one. An abused little chimney sweep named Tom is turned into a water-baby, and lives in the water, having strange adventures with even stranger creatures. It's funny, because he wrote it as a mild reprimand to scientists who were not convinced by Darwin's theory of evolution. Since you weren't there, how can you know? was his basic argument, and that I totally agreed with, an saw it as applicable for today, with everyone all panicked and in an uproar about things that, honestly, they just don't know for sure. That is one lesson that will never be out of vogue. Even scientists don't know everything. No one does.

Promoting and Marketing the Library

Last night I finished reading "Promoting and Marketing the Library" by Benedict A. Leerburger. I'm taking Marketing for Nonprofit Organizations in school right now, and the professor suggested if we've had limited experience with marketing, to read as many books on the subject as we could. This was one of the few that I've been able to find so far, since I don't want to drive all the way to a CSU to check books out of an academic library. Even though it was published nearly 20 years ago (at least, the edition I have) it was still pretty relevant and interesting. Not the most exciting of subjects, I know, but necessary to have a good grasp of. There were even chapters on promoting academic and special collection libraries in addition to public ones. Plenty of good ideas to build on for my class, and I think, even though the book has been on the shelf in that library I checked it out of since 1992, I'm the first person to check it out, because it was in mint condition! A rarity for a library book of that age.

Monday, October 1, 2007

The Outsiders and The Camel Bookmobile

Yesterday I finished reading "The Outsiders" by S. E. Hinton. It is one of those teen classic books I always meant to read and just never got around to it until now. I must say, I wasn't very impressed with this book. Written 40 years ago, it seems very dated and unrealistic. The main characters are members of a "gang" (they don't like to think of it as such) and they say things like "golly", which, I mean, come on, let's face it, no 16 year old high school drop out greaser working at a gas station is going to say things like that. The 14 year old main character, Ponyboy, is reading "Gone with the Wind", once again, not terribly realistic. It would be a very unique 14 year old boy indeed who enjoys this book. The whole moral of the story (not to judge a book by its cover, basically) is presented in a corny and unconvincing way, and anybody reading it will spot the message a mile away. I honestly can't believe, with all the really great literature out there, that teachers still make kids read this in high school. No wonder so many teens think books are lame.
I also read "The Camel Bookmobile" by Marsha Hamilton, a really fun book about a librarian from New York who goes to Africa to deliver books by camel to natives living in the bush. She teaches them almost as much as they teach her, but unlike "The Outsiders", the lessons were subtle and realistically delivered, and the main characters were well written. It seems like an interesting job, but not one I would ever want! Too many mosquitoes for me, thanks. I would recommend this one, though, to anyone interested in a quick, interesting read.