Caffeinated Gonzo!

Teachers: looking for a way to encourage an interest in reading in your students?  Parents: do you wish for a way to get your kids to put down the joystick and pick up a book?

Librarians and educators all over have been feeling your pain and have been looking for a way to reach out to the younger video gamers among us. Their solution: tie gaming interests to literature and an interest in competitive gaming to a visit to the local library.

Creative librarians and libraries are beginning to host gaming nights to promote reading and introduce libraries into the lives of teenage and younger citizens. Read more about this development at the Shifted Librarian.

It is sad to hear that the great author Arthur C. Clarke has passed away.  Although he was 90 and lived a long fruitful and prophetic life, he will be missed.  Few have matched his accomplishments.

Rest in Peace.

Several members of my family (who I shall not name here for my own protection should read this blog entry on How to Open a Book! While you are at it ~ print out the attached guide for future reference.

You know who you are… don’t deny it.

[image "borrowed" from Michael Lieberman's original post]

Having waded through many, many books that based on their  serve a more useful function based on their weight in my car’s trunk in Buffalo’s icy winters than they often do in their shear volume of information gained pear dosage of Advil taken when carted about, I find the potential utility of online bookseller LazyLibrary to be an interesting business model. LazyLibrary’s web site tag is “read less. get more.”

They continue to advertise” “Ever read a book that was a few hundred pages longer than it needed to be? Yeah, so have we.”  This is just what the ADHD generation has been waiting for.  Every book LazyLibrary sells is promoted as being 200 pages or less.  Enjoy.

Or is that bare all?  In any case, talk is spreading in publishing circles that Donal Rumsfeld is shopping his memoirs.  This of couse would be no surprise to any one who has ever stepped inside a bookstore, but I have  to ask… why should anyone want buy his book?  Do you really expect to learn something from it, gain state secrets… get a good laugh, maybe?

Political memoirs, 99.995% of the time are nothing if not boring. Yet, publishers keep shelling out huge advances for this pap. Come on… be honest Mr. Publisher, we all  (and you certianly should) know that Rumsfeld’s tome will end up taking up valuable space in the remainder bins in bookstores within a matter of months. 

Do your part for the environment and your bottom line… just say “no” to Mr. Rumsfeld.  Save the space in the remainder bin’s for something more valuable to the culture as a whole like the latest two or three Tom Clancy titles or last year’s Danielle Steel’s hard cover.

I agree with booksquare… stop the madness.

Anyone who knows me or any member of my family eventually is likely to realize three things: one that we come from a long line of garage sale / swap meet scroungers, two; we are incurable pack-rats, and three; we all love books, and the more books the better. By all accounts, and surely much to my wife’s mild consternation, I am effected by nearly all of the family’s ancestral traits listed; particularly the book-loving gene.

Those who know me well then would not be surprised to find that the used book sale of the local University of Buffalo chapter of the American Association of University Women is likely to attract my attention. This annual event is a fund raiser for the organization’s scholarship fund is one of the largest and most extensive used book sales I have ever encountered in the western New York area.

This was the second year that I attended the three day sale in Amherst. Last year I spent hours pouring over the tables of books looking for bargains. This year my efforts were a bit more focussed but I still found dozens of treasures to take home. At this event I tend to favor books that cover topics of a political or historical subject matter, however there are literally hundreds of titles by popular authors such as Tom Clancy and Danielle Steel, and Stephen King, if you prefer that sort of thing.

If you like what you see on day one, pick up a handful of your favorites for a buck a piece. On day three return to pick up bagfuls of books at even better prices in preparation for your own Summertime yard / book sale. When you are finished reading all your treasures, check into donating what you can’t fit on your personal bookshelves back to the AAUW’s book sale the following year. Look for the 2008 sale at the end of May. Have fun. Read often.

My first “real” personal computer was a Commodore 64.  In fact, I still have a Commodore (the 128) in my basement, it was my Dad’s.  My Commodore taught me more about computers and their potential than all the Big Blue computers and their friendly card punch machines I was exposed to in my youth ever could.  The Commodore inspired dreams!  Now I can reminisce and read all about those heady days when Commodore Business Machines entered the home computer market. 

Read samenes’ review of Brian Bagnall’s book on Slashdot at:

On The Edge: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of Commodore

The single most pervasive reference for generations of scanner geeks is soon to be no more. Gene Hughes, editor and publisher of Police Call is retiring the publication. Sold most often at Radio Shack, this guide documented the local frequencies used by police, fire departments. EMS and many other radio intensive operations across the nation.

For many of us our scanners were our first introduction to the real day to day workings of the emergency services. I myself became more than a fan of this often geeky hobby by listening to my scanner ~ I made the leap and became a firefighter.

Of course with the Internet everywhere in our lives these days reference books such as these don't have quite the market they once did but I will miss having the opportunity of trucking over to Radio Shack once a year to pick up a fresh copy of Police Call.

Good luck to you Mr. Hughes.

Read more on WiredNews

Hammer. Nail. Wood.: The Compulsion to Build

by Thomas P. Glynn

Building a home is truly an organic process. By “building” I am not speaking of paying some one or some company to put up a house for you, I am speaking of constructing a house, a home from the ground up to the rafters and beyond with your own two hands.

Being an organic process, house building is by extension, if not definition, messy. It’s messy in terms in terms of the mud and materials, the dust and the destruction so necessary a part of construction. It is messy because of the muck that comes from creating a home out of a dizzying whirl of creative, financial, and family dynamics. It’s messy because to truly build one’s own home piece by piece means getting one’s hands dirty.

Thomas Glynn’s book “Hammer. Nail. Wood: The Compulsion to Build“ is not really it about the “nuts and bolts” of the building process, there is very little how-to knowledge imparted here. Glynn focuses instead on the nuts of a different sort required to build one’s own home. What doesn’t scare you about Glynn’s unusual book just might serve to inspire you.

See more about Hammer. Nail. Wood.: The Compulsion to Build

In short: A worth read. Interesesting word construction.

Lamy of Santa Fe

by Paul Horgan

Growing up in New Mexico in the 60’s, 70’s and early 80’s three things were extremely evident: the historical confluence of the Mexican and native cultures about the place and the layered influence of the Catholic Church on top of it all. Not growing up Catholic, much of this culture was a mystery to me at the time. Now being older, much more mindful of historical influences and a convert to Catholicism, the influence of the Catholic Church in my native state of New Mexico is of great interest to me personally.

Imagine my feeling of good fortune then when I discover a copy of Lamy of Santa Fe by Paul Horgan, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for History in the bargain bin at the college bookstore of my neighboring university. Much better than the implied dust covered status of my find, Horgan wrote brings to life in biographical form the historical life of Bishop Lamy. Lamy was not only the first Bishop of Santa Fe, he was one of the most important, influential, and civilizing figures of late 19th Century western expansion of our country. Adding to his significance is that fact that his presence can still be felt all over historical and modern day New Mexico.

This well written book isn’t just for people interested in the historical influence of the Catholic Church; it has something to say to anyone interested in the history of the United States in general and the Southwest in particular. Mr. Horgan did a sympathetic and masterful job of bring this man’s life into focus for his readers.

See more about Lamy of Santa Fe