John Gushue . . . Dot Dot Dot

Your own time

"What you read when you don’t have to determines what you will be when you can’t help it."
- Oscar Wilde 

Andrew McCarthy, reconsidered

One of the podcasts I like listening to while I make coffee and putter about the house is Alec Baldwin's Here's the Thing, which is produced by WNYC in New York. The show is an extended chat with a notable person, often someone in entertainment, with often insightful results; Baldwin, it turns out, has a knack for conversation. Last night, I listened to the latest show, with Andrew McCarthy - yes, the Andrew McCarthy who was in movies like St. Elmo's Fire and who is still best known as being a member of the so-called Rat Pack of Eighties movie stars. And since then, he ... well, I had no idea.

As it turned out, McCarthy has continued to work in movies, TV and theatre, often as a director, but he's made a very different niche for himself as a travel writer. The thing that put him on the Here's The Thing is a memoir called The Longest Way Home, which seems to be not so much as seeing the world as learning how to grow up. (McCarthy is about to turn 50.) 

I like hearing interviews of people whose work I know well, but I also like being surprised, and finding something interesting in something I had never (to be frank) cared much about.

Here's the interview. 

A new Jack tale

Out now from self-described micro-press Running The Goat is a new Jack story by Andy Jones, who has been collecting and telling them now for a few decades. Jack and Mary in the Land of Thieves features illustrations by Darka Erelji, and it's on my list. 

Running The Goat even produced a pretty nifty video to promote it. Here it is: 

Robert Crumb's notebooks

Here's a collector's item I learned about, like the author of the piece: an edition from three decades ago of Robert Crumb's (or, R. Crumb's, if credibility really, really matters to you) sketchbooks from his truckin' prime.     

How to fake having read a book

Specifically, faking your way through a book club meeting, and even more specifically, one of those book club meetings. 

From Funny Or Die. 

Surviving a Book Club: Better Book Titles presents HOW NOT TO READ by Dan Wilbur - watch more funny videos

Doubly endangered

"Thank you, phone books, for combining the two things that no one answers or reads anymore."
- Jimmy Fallon 

[This was part of the Thank You Notes series on Late Night, airing last week. The feature has inspired a book, not to mention a Tumblr appreciation blog.]

A lift in the library limit (electronically, that is)

I got a pleasant surprise last night when I logged on to the e-library that the Newfoundland and Labrador Public Libraries offers. 

There used to be a limit of three titles that you could have out at a time. Now, that limit is up to five books - and it does make a difference, especially if you really just want to have a look at a book and see if it's worth the investment of time. (This is a downside of borrowing electronically; at least at the stacks, you can quickly browse a wide variety of books, and there's something to be said about that tactile connection.) 

I've been finding the e-book service quite useful, and indeed have been reading more, and more widely, since I installed it. Learning I had room for two extra titles was a gift.  

A great reason for reading night

"Children want to do what the grownups do. Children should learn that reading is pleasure, not just something that teachers make you do in school." 
- Beverly Cleary 

Be careful what you wish for (international fiction deity edition)

"The Nobel prize is a fairytale for a week and a nightmare for a year."
- Mario Vargas Llosa

The above quote from the 2010 laureate appeared in this article published Friday in The Guardian. 

 

That poor, poor book

This cracked me up: a library book about passive-aggression, with all of the pages removed. I'm sure there's a story there!

As spotted here.

Fear and reading

"Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing."
- Harper Lee

 

 

Such a funny book

"From the moment I picked up your book until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it." 
- Groucho Marx  

 

Here's one way to stack your books

In which selected hardcovers donate something to the bigger picture. 

As seen here. 

Electronic books, and the real job of transforming our public libraries

[Surf’s Up, as published in the St. John's Telegram on Thursday, Feb. 9, 2012.]

A little while ago, my wife got a notification from the library that a book she had wanted was ready for her to read. Instead of driving over to pick it up, though, she made a few taps on a screen and the book was hers to enjoy.

Newfoundland and Labrador Public Libraries

The eLibrary program of our public library system is a great addition to its services, and I’ve really been happy to see (or rather hear) ads that promote it. After all, advertising is really necessary to reach a new audience.

We learned about it first during a library visit, but as any regular patron will tell you, a great many people never set foot on a library floor. That means you need to get their attention through other means.

I’m a great believer in libraries. I love them, I love going there, I love wandering the stacks, and I love finding surprises. I also see them as essential to the meaning of community, and believe that reading stokes our economic engines.

However, I have to be honest and say that Newfoundland and Labrador does not truly value its libraries, and sometimes seems to neglect them. I’d love to see the library system truly transformed, and given the respect that libraries deserve, and that goes far beyond offering e-books. 

But first, let’s take a look at what’s on offer with the digital library. That notification my wife got? That will sound familiar to anyone who’s used a library regularly, and used to get a call or a notice in the mail (and more recently an email). Getting the book is simple enough: you need to log in, add the title to your cart and check it out. It’s available for precisely two weeks.

If it’s just a digital copy, why wait at all for it to be become available? That’s because the library pays for digital licences for the books in this program. If it has, say, two licences for one book, only two people can have it on their Kindle or Kobo or tablet at any one time.

I have yet to use the service with my own card, by the way. As digital-minded as I am, I still actually read my books the old-fashioned way. I am planning to get my own tablet soon, in part because reading news headlines on a phone can be a headache-prompter, and in part because I’ve seen how my wife (a nonstop reader, like me) has really enjoyed having an iPad.

What I’ve seen in the eLibrary selection is not bad. A lot of popular fiction, a smattering of material in various other sections, some surprises. And don’t forget, we’re still in early days. I hope that the variety expands continually.

A single patron can have three e-books out on loan at a time, and after two weeks, your licence expires, which means tapping on the icon won’t work. The upside is that there are no late fines! You can renew in a jiffy, though, should there be no one waiting for the book.

This is a convenient system, and I imagine it’s very welcome news for people who don’t live at all close to a library. The geographic gap has been made considerably shorter.

But the eLibrary is not enough to transform our libraries into the institutions they ought to be.

My local library happens to be the A.C. Hunter, the flagship in the province’s system, and a place I’ve been going since I was a little kid. Our family has made a habit lately of “library night,” and every two weeks (sometimes three) we trek over, split up and then regroup with what we’d like to borrow.

Some nights, there are readings and activity. More often, though, the place feels deserted, and it’s such a shame. Compare that to the buzz and the crowd at the same time at Chapter’s, around the corner on Kenmount Road. It says something – quite a lot, actually – that many people prefer to hang out and relax at a place where books cost money than where they are free.

I don’t like the physical space of the Hunter. It’s not nearly big enough, and is constricted by how it’s wedged into the Arts and Culture Centre. The fiction stacks bore me; I see the same old (decades-old, in many cases) hardcovers every time.

We need to rethink all our libraries, top to bottom … with the exception of Memorial University’s library, which has a first-rate and publicly overlooked collection. Very few of the schools in the province have a dedicated, full-time librarian; the threshold for such a position is several hundred more students than the typical school actually has.

As kids grow up, the public libraries are hardly designed to be places where they would want to go.

Simply stated, the public libraries are not particularly welcoming places. The librarians themselves? They’re great, and I always find them helpful. But the spaces are cold and institutional, and feel like they’re meant for storage, not active use. Believe me, it takes more than a couch to get that feeling across.

Nor do we make them as accessible as they could be. They are not funded to be open seven days a week, let alone six. It pains me that the libraries aren’t open on Sundays – and don’t get me started about summer hours. 

Yes, the answer involves money (we spend far too little per capita on the knowledge sector of the economy), but it’s more than that. It means some visionary thinking has to come from the owners of the libraries, and that includes politicians and consumers alike. That’s no easy nut to crack.

But think about what libraries could be. As my wife puts it, “libraries should be our city squares,” where people simply want to go, regardless of whether they’re planning to borrow anything or not.

The eLibrary is a great step toward connecting the public with a good resource in our midst. But let’s work at making it a great resource, once that involves bricks and mortar as much as bits and bytes.

John Gushue is an editor with CBC News in St. John’s. Twitter: @johngushue

Mr. Prufrock drops in for a coffee

As seen here.

The reading techology that does not need to be recharged

My wife and my mother-in-law laughed quite a bit over this video, which praises the humble book. It helps to know Spanish, but fortunately this version has English subtitles.

A different Bond goal for the year

Last year, around this time, the three of us started watching the James Bond movies in chronological order. It was fun; this weekend, we dipped into the DVD chest and pulled out a favourite (You Only Live Twice) as we took it easy one night. 

I'd like to try something different: reading the original Ian Fleming books. Not necessarily in order, and while I read some when I was younger (my dad was and is a fan of spy fiction, and I tracked a few down at the library and bought at least one on my own), a good number I've never read at all. My impressions stand to be corrected, but I thought that the tack that the movie franchise has taken with Daniel Craig has been in line with Fleming's concept of Bond - apart from the easy sophistication, this guy was not afraid to use his fists. Maybe I'm wrong. We'll see! 

 

Gathering wool

"I’m the sort who works very hard on something for years. And then there are years where I do nothing, just a bit of wool-gathering or whatever. I like doing nothing, if I can avoid doing something."
- Vikram Seth

[This quote was referenced in Sunday's edition of Desert Island Discs on BBC Radio 4, in which Seth was the featured guest. I tracked it down to this 2008 interview. Seth revealed that he has been working on a sequel to A Suitable Boy, to be called A Suitable Girl, for many years. We'll have to wait a bit later to see it.]  

Turgid

"The covers of this book are too far apart."
- Ambrose Bierce  

A new take on a literary landscape

Look carefully ... and you'll see the books. More landscapes that were sculpted from books can be seen in this gallery. 

What a book does

"A book burrows into your life in a very profound way because the experience of reading is not passive."
- Erica Jong 

#junkfoodnovels

A Twitter meme that passed by my eyes last night was called #junkfoodnovels - the challenge being to adjust the name of a book with a not-particularly-respectable food item. Thus, options include The Sound and the McFlurry, Lord of the Fries and Clan of the Gummi Bears. 

I chipped in my own .. not being able to resist this kind of a challenge.

My best shot: Don Quixostess. 

My second-best: Little Dorito. 

Others I tweeted: 

Horton Hears a Yoo-Hoo 
To Have and Have Nacho
Mrs. DalloMilkyWay 
À la recherche du temps perMountain Dew 
The (After) Eight 
Oryx and Cake (although I nod my head to the smarter brain who came up with Oreos and Cake)  
The Man With the Cooked to a Golden Perfection Arm  
The Adventures of Kavalier and KFC 
The Lord of the Ring-o-Los  

 

 

How many of these books have you read?

This is a feature from Esquire with the very Esquire-y title of The 75 Books Every Man Should Read. 

Of the 75, I've read 15, and I started more than a handful of others. (Not finishing books is a specialty!) 

A bit hefty on the macho and the American and the 20th century, but I found a good nudge to get back to reading more books. 

 

Progress

"What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages, they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books." 
- Sigmund Freud 

 

Sheer boredom

"I feel asleep reading a dull book, and I dreamed that I was reading on, so I awoke from sheer boredom."
- Heinrich Heine