The Rage Diaries

Match It for Pratchett

Like the Discworld? Gutted by the news that the author's got a rare form of Alzheimer's? Join other fans worldwide as they strive to match Terry Pratchett's $1 million donation for Alzheimer's research.

Dewey, you fool! -- What I read this month

Oh, I have such good intentions. But to be honest, this month has been sort of busy with the actual, paying jobs and with the Quick!-Get-outside-and-weed-before-the-next-monsoon-hits! household chores and with the occasional social commitment or volunteer obligation. And next thing I knew, my beautiful dream of starting off the year right with my two-parter on My Time in the 000s and weekly reviews of what I read ... well, I'm now dreaming of getting off on the right foot in time for the Chinese New Year. Or later. It depends on how many other cultures have new years' celebrations I can use to make myself feel better about my time management skills.

(Note to self: see where time-management books are in Dewey Decimal system. Won't it be fun if I get all hardcore GTD on you all? No?)

However, if you'd like to read quickie summaries of the wonders to be found in the 000s, click on through.

Dewey, you fool! -- My time in the 000s, part I

What is the point of exploring the Dewey Decimal system if I don't provide an accounting of what I'm finding on the shelves? Reading a book doesn't start when you crack it open; it begins with the moment you pull it from the shelf and judge it. So I'm accounting for what I bring to the selection process, and what is there for me to choose from. Who knows what adventures lurk at the Alameda Free Library?

Aside from all of you following the jump, I mean.

Dewey, you fool! -- How I'm reading books

It is easy to read about something you like. Choosing to read about subjects that unfamiliar ... that's where the real learning takes place, the kind of hard learning that makes you empathize with the kid in the Far Side cartoon who asked, "May I be excused? My brain is full."

Since I brought home a stack of books on cryptozoology, the book as a vehicle of civilization, and the media as the vehicle destroying the same, I am experiencing that feeling: my brain is full.

Barring a Hogswatch miracle ...

Terry Pratchett, the bestselling author of the Discworld fantasy books, is suffering from a rare form of early onset Alzheimer's.

-- "Prachett Announces He Has Alzheimer's," The Guardian, Dec 12, 07

You can read the statement Pratchett issued here. It has his usual touches. I'll be spending the rest of the day thinking of the Mike Resnick story "Winter Solstice."

I (heart) mutlichannel commerce!

Perhaps the two margaritas I've just knocked back have loosened my fingers on the keyboard too much, for I'm about to confess one of my favorite pop culture products ...

The Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders: Making the Team II, now airing on CMT.

Part of my fascination stems from the quasi-religious self-abnegation and fervent adoration that the aspiring DCCs on this show exhibit. It's a unique subculture, and y'all know how I love examining the internal rules that define any group of people who identify with a specific type of membership.

So because I am taken with the whole Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders thing, I decided to learn more. Enter Deep in the Heart of Texas: Reflections of Former Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, by former DCCs Suzette, Stephanie and Sheri Scholz. Only thing is, this book is available used, and it's not in my library system.

Enter Amazon.com. I found the page for the book and noticed that the first seller was Blue Rectangle ... which happens to have recently opened a store in Alameda's little downtown. A quick phone call later and I was talking with someone at Blue Rectangle's warehouse; she got the book shipped over to me and I walked over to the store and paid a little less than I would have if I were to have had it shipped.

And then, I spent a delightful evening reading about how in the early 1980s, the cheerleaders dealt with the punishing schedule and crazy weight-control requirements by adopting an all-cocaine diet. Good times! And they were made entirely possible by a combination of online and offline commerce. Gosh, I love multichannel retail.

Book 'em

I have a garage full of books at the moment, thanks to the confluence of two events in my life: a friend of Phil's reducing his book collection and us preparing for our annual block sale in two weeks. I am a winnower of books: if I don't remember reading it or -- worse -- if I read it and found it unsatisfying, it goes out the door.

Now I face the necessary, subsequent re-organization of the shelves. This year, I'm vapor-locked on the task: we have one bookcase in a state of profound disrepair, and it happens to be in the room that I'm hankering to empty, renovate and fit with considerably less dilapidated shelves. So I'm debating whether to go to all the bother of reshelving now if I'm only clearing out the room later. It is nerve-wracking when one's love of classification clashes with one's love of optimizing one's time.

Although I'm not sure when I'll get around to optimizing the match-up between shelf space and subject, I do know something: I will not be organizing my books by color. This Flickr pool puts me in mind of the Anne Fadiman anecdote about the decorator who organized a clients' books by color, subsequently met an untimely death, and was judged  by unrepentant bibliofiends as having reaped what he sowed.

(Those people would probably point a paper-cut-riddled finger at me too with my insistence on chucking mediocre volumes. They would be more akin to the folks featured in the LAT's Aug 11, 05, "When You're Buried in Books.")

Yet this arranging-books-by-color thing is apparently gaining currency. A few years ago, it was an art installation at Adobe Books in San Francisco. Last year, the idea found its way into paintings, and then into the Q&A column at Apartment Therapy. And now, the idea's moved out of the urban, artsy or modernist circles and into the mainstream with RealSimple's bookshelf makeover.

There's no denying that many books are beautiful objects, so organizing them to optimize their visual value does make sense. But that desire seems at odds with my hankerings to organize books by subject, or by personal chronology, or by how much I love them. And since I don't spend as much time looking at books as I do in them, I'll be passing up the rainbow approach for an as-yet-undecided schema.

How do you organize your books? What factors drive your organizing, or lack thereof?

Friday Link Farm: The Harry Potter Fan Crop

This week's collection of links relates to the whole Harry Potter phenomenon -- which I expect will reach its apex at ... TODAY.

Why this minute? Even if a boatload of people are thoroughly spoiled (and thanks a lot for that, FUNKILLERS. What's next, kicking old people for fun and putting the footage on YouTube?), once the spoiler-averse people have the books in their hot little paws, everything will be up for grabs.

I guarantee that at least one person will be like, "I just wasted EIGHT YEARS on this series! I dressed up like Argus Filch at the last six bookstore events for NOTHING! What the -- ? I mean, I can't -- ? No, no, no. Can't speak. Head exploding in outrage."

So let's enjoy the sweet, swiftly fleeting moments of anticipatory promise before the inevitable fanboy/fangirl bitchfest. Have some links!

"A Bid for Harry Potter's Green Fans" (NYT, Jul 7, 07) -- "As part of a growing worldwide campaign that is prompting a shift in the publishing industry, environmental groups, including the National Wildlife Federation and Greenpeace, are asking Potter fans in the United States not to buy Scholastic's editions and instead to order the new title online from Canada, where the publisher, Raincoast Books, has printed the book on 100 percent recycled paper."

"Five Ways to End Harry Potter" (NYT, Jul 8, 07) -- Read all about it: The Boy Who Died by Damon Lindelof; When Harry Met Davey by Meg Cabot; Made in Hogwarts by Larry Doyle; Hermione Tells All by Polly Horvath; The Last Day by Andrea Dezso

"Potter Has Limited Effect on Reading Habits" (NYT, Jul 11, 07) -- "As the series draws to a much-lamented close, federal statistics show that the percentage of youngsters who read for fun continues to drop significantly as children get older, at almost exactly the same rate as before Harry Potter came along."

"Potter Embargo Could Be Broken" (BBC, Jul 12, 07) -- "Some shops are not expected to keep a written agreement which prevents them selling the book before 21 July."

"TV Cameras Record Rowling's Year" (BBC, Jul 13, 07) -- "The show will give a rare insight into the writer's personal life and show her finishing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the final book in the series."

"Harry Potter 'Wrockers' Conjure Musical Magic" (ABC News, Jul 13, 07) -- "Meet Harry and the Potters and Draco and the Malfoys, just two of nearly 200 Harry Potter-themed bands -- including the Hungarian Horntails, the Whomping Willows and the Remus Lupins -- who are touring venues across the country bringing their own style of "wrock" -- that's wizard rock -- to a generation that has grown up reading about the magical world of wands, spells and dragons." (Includes link to Draco and the Malfoys' song "My Dad Is Rich.")

"ICYMI: Local News Report Exposes Cruel Injustice Of America’s Wizarding School System" -- Not an article, but a video clip.

"The £10m Charm to Shield Harry's Secret" (The Telegraph, Jul 15, 07) -- "A £10 million security operation featuring an army of guards, satellite tracking systems and draconian legal contracts has swung into action to prevent any leak of details of the seventh and final book about the boy wizard." [Ed note: Read this in conjunction with Time's June 29, 07 "Harry Potter and the Sinister Spoilers."] [Ed note the second: And then wonder if heads are going to roll thanks to all the purported leaks.]

"Harry Potter and the Diminished Returns" (LAT, Jul 16, 07) -- "Amid this avalanche of commerce and pre-publication hype, the book business is ruefully taking note of a startling incongruity: Very few U.S. booksellers will be making big money from "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.""

"Was the Boy Wizard the Charm that Made Children's Books Fly?" (WaPo, Jul 18, 07) -- "Ask about Harry's effect on the industry and the first thing you'll hear is that Rowling's books disproved the longstanding belief that hardcover children's fiction didn't sell. The next is that they've caused a vast and lucrative expansion of the fantasy category."

Librarians have all the fun

Welcome to the Third Annual Bookcart Drill Team World Championships, where librarians in elaborate costumes choreograph spinning carts, execute dance and gymnastic routines to jazzy soundtracks, and shake their booties to shake up the public perception of the stuffy librarian.

Last weekend's world championship at the American Library Association's annual meeting is the most high-profile, but not the only, event of its kind. There are more than 200 library cart drill teams around the country – all part of an ALA image makeover and public outreach effort.

"It's all about the image that librarians are stodgy, stern, always shushing," said Caroline Langendorfer of Madison, Wis.,             a competitor in the previous two world championships. "Cardigans. Hair buns. I love shaking up [that] stereotype."

                   

-- "Dewey Decimal Divas," CSM, June 27, 07

How, in this age of whip-smart librarian weblogs and librarian action figures, can this so-called stodgy-librarian image keep going? I mean, seriously -- one of the librarians at the main branch in Alameda is practically crippled around the check-out machine because his piercings keep throwing the scanning wand out of whack.

I always write "cat fud"

"Lists tell us a lot about our neighbors, our friends, our ancestors, our species and ourselves. First, lists remind us that us we are obsessive. Or maybe we are forgetful, I forget. Regardless, lists — especially lists of things we want and need, such as groceries — provide tiny glimpses into private lives. They're usually honest reflections of a person. Simple needs, amusing quirks and sundry cures for infirmities listed and checked off.

"Most found lists are anonymous; just scribbled words on a page. But we can relate. I need toilet paper just like you. You need banannas. Bannanas. Banananas. Bnanans? Bannas. Bananas. Hmmm. More on that later."

-- "How Do You Spell Bananana?" St. Louis Post Dispatch, June 11, 07

I will be sure to flip through Bill Keaggy's new book, Milk Eggs Vodka, when I see it. I am always fascinated by other people's grocery lists and their grocery cart contents.

My own lists tend to be short and boring. And, given the Schmichaels family habit of buying all our fresh produce at the farmers' market, I suspect that other grocery cart snoops look at our conveyor belt full of cat food, Gordon Biersch marzen, Three Thieves cabernet, Bolla pinot grigio, parmesan cheese and turkey bacon, and they think we're courting rickets or scurvy -- when we're not staving off the DTs.

What do your grocery lists look like? Do you have different lists for different places? Do you dork out at holidays (as I do) and end up spreadsheeting your sundries by recipe (as I do)? Or do you prefer to just let items find their way into your basket?