Read Something! DIARY by Chuck Palahnuik

DIARY
Chuck Palahnuik

Literary (?) fiction

Misty Wilmot was supposed to be a famous artist, but somehow that didn't quite work out. Somehow she ended up with a husband and a daughter and a dead-end waitressing job at the run-down hotel on Waytansea Island, where she's found herself living after marriage and pregnancy deferred her dreams. Somehow she's supposed to manage things alone after her husband, a building contractor, put himself in a coma through a failed suicide attempt. After his clients started calling, complaining of rooms in their houses found boarded-up, of strange obscene messages left inside.

All Misty wanted was to be an artist, before married motherhood on this picturesque island distracted her. Now, she's at the end of her rope. It doesn't help that all her mother-in-law wants her to do is take up her long-forgotten paints. It's what Misty's daughter wants, too. And many of the old island families are asking after her art... Something begins to seem not quite right as everyone on the island goes to increasing lengths to spark Misty's creativity. It's not clear what her art is supposed to accomplish - but it's becoming increasingly evident that she won't be allowed to not paint.

This is a dark and snappily written little novel for those of us interested in just how far people will go, and how awful the things they do will be, to ensure their own survival. It's by the author of Fight Club - so expect a healthy dose of meta and a plot twist or seven thrown in for good measure.

Read Something! REDSHIRTS by John Scalzi

REDSHIRTS
John Scalzi

Science fiction

Ensign Andrew Dahl has just been posted to the Intrepid, the flagship of the Universal Union fleet. It's a prestigious post, but when Dahl arrives on board, he finds that life aboard the Intrepid is just a little... well, strange. To start off, it seems like the crew avoids their senior officers. Those that don't tend to get assigned to away teams, and those assigned to away teams... often end up dead. Then there's the Box, a device of unknown provenance that consistently offers solutions to insoluble problems just in the nick of time. Something isn't right on the Intrepid, and Dahl and his friends are going to get to the bottom of it - even if it means their world will never be the same.

Scalzi has written a fast-paced, entertaining narrative great for fans of Star Trek and similar sci-fi shows as well as people who enjoy a healthy dose of "meta" in their fiction.

 

Read Something! LOVE AND REVOLUTIONARY GREETINGS by Laurie Levinger

LOVE AND REVOLUTIONARY GREETINGS: AN OHIO BOY IN THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR
Laurie Levinger

Nonfiction / history / biography

Laurie Levinger never met her uncle Sam, though his pictures were in every house she lived in growing up. Sam died in 1937 in the Spanish Civil War, to which he had gone as one of the three thousand Americans who joined the International Brigades fighting Fascism. In 2001, Laurie's father gave her a box of letters and other memorabilia about Sam - and Laurie's journey to discover who her uncle was began.

Love and Revolutionary Greetings is the story of a young man, idealistic and courageous, who fought and died in an attempt to create a better world. It is the story, too, of Sam's mother, of the family he left behind, and of one of the great convulsions preceding World War II. Levinger has edited an affecting collection of first-hand descriptions of the war and its aftermath - mostly Sam's letters and his mother's written attempts to understand his life and his fate, but also primary source material from others who were in the war and Laurie and her family's own thoughts about Sam.

Readalikes:

• World War II Remembered by the residents of Kendal at Hanover? - also first-person stories of wartime

Read Something! A CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWITZ by Walter M. Miller, Jr.

A CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWITZ
Walter M. Miller, Jr.

Science fiction / postapocalyptic fiction / literary fiction

In the centuries after nuclear apocalypse, human society rebuilds itself almost from scratch. Told in three sections, each set several centuries after the previous story, A Canticle for Leibowitz shows us the lives of three men in the Order of Saint Leibowitz, an order of monks dedicated to preserving what books and papers remain of the civilization that existed before global thermonuclear war destroyed much of human society and precipitated a violent backlash against the educated, technologically advanced culture that had made nuclear weapons possible. As Miller brings the reader into the hearts, minds, hopes, and dreams of relatively ordinary people, and as the world moves from a dark age through a new renaissance into another technological era, the unavoidable question looms: will humanity avoid its past mistakes?

Warning [and spoiler warning]: This is not a happy ending.

Readalikes:

• Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban - similar post-nuclear-apocalyptic Dark Ages setting, questions of what society would look like after a nuclear holocaust, themes of history repeating itself
• Miller wrote a sequel, Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman.
• 1984 - similar for sheer bleakness

Read Something! THREE PARTS DEAD by Max Gladstone

THRE PARTS DEAD
Max Gladstone 

Fantasy / thriller

Kos Everburning, god of fire, is dead. Without Him, the great city of Alt Coulumb, dependent on his powers, will soon die as well.

Tara Abernathy left the Hidden Schools in fire and lightning, expelled post-graduation in a great battle with her former professors. Despite her irregular method of departure, she's caught the eye of the prestigious firm Kelethras, Albrecht, and Ao, and now she's an entry-level associate tasked with finding out who killed Kos, how, and why. Soon Tara, her only-somewhat-human boss, and their temporary assistant, the chain-smoking priest Abelard, are avoiding assassination attempts, chasing vampires, fending off attacks by gargoyles, and uncovering a web of intrigue that brings them before the reincarnation of Justice Herself to argue their case.

This is that too-rare work of speculative fiction that combines carefully detailed world-building with well-realized characters who feel like real people. Add a thrilling plot with plenty of twists, turns, and adventure, and Gladstone's debut novel (!) is a winner. This book has it all: murder, magic, intrigue, treachery, power, love - and I'm eagerly awaiting the sequel, coming in October 2013.

Readalikes:

• The book jacket invokes Zelazny, Gaiman, and Grisham. I haven't read Zelazny and I'm not sure I concur with Grisham (the legal thriller aspects are there, but I don't really know that it's the same), but Gaiman's writing seems to have a very similar atmosphere/feeling to it.
• Might be a good stretch for mystery/thriller readers who could be induced to read something in a more fantastic setting.

Read Something! AFFINITY by Sarah Waters

AFFINITY 
Sarah Waters

Historical fiction / literary fiction / horror

Surfacing from a deep depression brought on by her father's death, Margaret Prior takes a family friend's advice and volunteers as a "lady visitor" at Millbank, a women's prison, where she hopes to become a positive influence on some of the inmates. In those dreary surroundings she meets the spiritualist medium Selina Dawes, sentenced to Millbank after a seance gone wrong resulted in a woman's death. Margaret and Selina are drawn to each other, but does Selina really talk to spirits? And what really happened in her past? Alternating passages from Margaret and Selina's diaries bring us closer and closer to the truth of the night that drastically changed Selina's life - and to a night that will forever change Margaret's. This is a dark, psychological novel about loss and grief, and about living in a world into which one will never quite fit neatly.

Slight warnings for mentions of attempted suicide, some nonexplicit but non-"vanilla" eroticism.

Readalikes:

• The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters - similar slightly spooky atmosphere, unreliable narrators; both stories are deliberately vague as to the reality of the ghosts/spirits (at least for most of the narrative); both set in Britain in times past; both very focused on characters' psychology
• "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman - potentially unbalanced female narrators, similar time setting, themes of entrapment/imprisonment and haunting, atmospherically similar
  

I'm published on the ILA Marketing Committee blog!

I seem to be writing for other blogs much more than I'm writing for this one! As of this morning, I have a post up on the Illinois Library Association Marketing Committee blog about cultivating staff buy-in. You can find it here.

Read Something! DEAR CREATURE (Jonathan Case)

Dear Creature
JONATHAN CASE
Graphic novel, pulp, horror, romance

Summary 

This quirky, absurd mashup of romantic comedy, "B" horror flicks, and Shakespeare has to be read to be believed. Grue, a mutant horror from the deep, has discovered Shakespeare through a series of cola bottles cast adrift with the Bard's plays inside. Inspired, he renounces his flesh-eating ways and sets off in search of a lady love. Hilarious and sweet, this book will keep you hanging as you wait to see how Grue's quest for love will turn out. Don't miss the appendix, "An Invertebrate's Guide to Iambic Pentameter", in which Grue's Greek chorus of sarcastic crabs explain the poetic meter using the immortal phrase, "Ba-donk a-donk a-donk a-donk a-donk."

Appeal Characteristics

• Visuals: dramatic use of black and white
• Visuals: generally realistic art (although Grue is depicted less realistically)
• Visuals: fairly clean art, but panels are sometimes hard to decipher due to being very busy and not having shading
• Frame: silly/absurd tone
• Frame: main character is the character who is usually the "bad guy"
• Frame/plot/characterization: characters and situations are mostly stereotypes drawn from "B" movies/pulp horror
• Plot: romance/lovers who the world wants to keep apart
• Plot: happy ending
• Plot: loose ends are all tied up at the end
• Plot: plot is not very fleshed out and often relies on pointers/gestures to conventions and stereotypes of a typical pulp horror story
• Pacing: moves fairly fast; each chapter presents a new challenge to Grue's quest

Readalikes

• ???

I'm on Programming Librarian!

I was recently asked to write a post for the Programming Librarian blog about a cool program we do with the local art museum. It went up earlier this week - you can read it here, if you're interested.

PLA 2012 session notes: Get Involved: Powered by Your Library -- Successful Engagement of High Impact Volunteers

Following are my notes from the "Get Involved: Powered by Your Library -- Successful Engagement of High Impact Volunteers" session at PLA 2012, held on Saturday, March 17 at 8:30.

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Statewide volunteerism campaign in CA: "Get Involved powered by your library"

- Aim = get high-impact volunteers and make them advocates

- Volunteer recruitment aimed at baby boomers, who are different from senior volunteers

- Goals: train public libraries in recruiting and engaging skilled high-impact volunteers, position libraries as centers for civic engagement, help people find opportunities that match their skills and interests

Baby boomers and volunteerism

Why should we care?

* Lots of them (77 million)

* Most educated and financially secure generation in history

* Volunteer at higher rates than past generations did at the same age

* Nearly 2/3 of Boomer non- volunteers want to get involved but don’t know how

* Have been in workforce & have professional skills they want to share to make high level of impact

Right now, ages 48-66 – not silver-haired

Different from senior volunteers

* More physical ability than previous generations; 4 of 5 expect to work past 65; "feel younger"

* View retirement very differently -- see second half of life as a source of social and individual renewal, not as a time to just rest and relax

* Think some of their most important contributions lie ahead

* Not simply extending the years of working and volunteering -- looking to add deeper meaning

* Different perception of aging -- don’t want to be called “Seniors,” “Retirees,” “Elderly” or “Older Adults”

Attracting baby boomers

Offer flexibility and a wide variety of options, including virtual volunteering

Engage their skills and expertise

Show them impact on mission -- how will their work make a difference?

Provide clear expectations of time, tasks and training

Go beyond volunteer management – look at engagement in meaningful ways

See Get Involved: Powered By Your Library website for resources (library.ca.gov/lds/getinvolved.html?)

Idaho is now coming in on this project

VolunteerMatch created search widget that gives back multiple results – library opportunities, then literacy opportunities, than general opportunities near your zip code

Last 2 or 3 years, 27% increase in volunteers in California

General insights/thoughts from putting this in practice

One library no longer collects applications for generic volunteers, only for specific positions

High impact volunteers have leadership roles, may train and supervise other volunteers

Putting volunteers in teams helps in case of turnover (volunteers often have unpredictable time commitments)

Interview volunteers extensively and basically treat them like job applicants

Volunteer management software exists

Lessons

A good job description is key

- Make it very clear what skills and commitment you're looking for

For high impact volunteers, this is a real job

- Approach them personally to recruit them

- Professional level interviewing

- Look for a good fit, and give them a chance to say no

- Remain flexible

Communication is critical

- Trust your volunteers, keep them in the loop, facilitate networks, share successes and outcomes

- Feedback matters (from patrons and staff)

You can still  have volunteers doing more rote tasks – high impact volunteers don't exclude your having more traditional volunteer work

Make it fun, and include the volunteers in the process