Literary Gibberish

We’re going to keep it short and sweet this Monday after a working weekend and a night bereft of sleep. So follows an unequivocal recommendation that you read to your young one Dinosaur Roar by Paul and Henrietta Strickland.

Dinosaur Roar is full of simple rhymes that also teach the concept of opposites.

Dinosaur Roar / Dinosaur Squeak
Dinosaur Fierce / and Dinosaur Meek
Dinosaur Sweet, Dinosaur Grumpy/ Dinosaur Spikey, Dinosaur Lumpy

You get the idea. The rhymes roll off the tongue and the dinosaurs are charming and colorful. This was Zeke’s favorite for quite some time during the first year and he still asks for it from time to time. This will delight the younger crowd and come back around when it’s time to start learning to read¹.

^{1 Plus, seriously, dinosaurs! What kid doesn’t like dinosaurs?}

Today’s fun ‘n’ game comes from a recommendation by good friend and fellow blogger at this site Walter.  Do we detect some deeper going on when a man enrolled in an online LIS program sends us a game that involves evading guards and escaping a physical library building? Perhaps, dear reader. Perhaps.

Nevertheless, Library Labyrinth is a variation on a well heeled puzzle concept. You move one space while your opponent – the library security guard – moves two.  For all his freedom of movement, the guard is constrained by rules¹. He moves horizontally first and cannot see over, under, around or through obstacles. And he has no hops; he is unable to hurdle desks, chairs or study carrols to snatch your punk-ass bald for talking above a whisper in his hallowed halls.

But I digress. The point is, you need to work your way through the library putatively in search of your lost sister². Victory is within your grasp, but tread lightly. Woe betide the poor fool who gets caught in flagrante while treading among the sacred stacks. Good luck and happy weekend.

^{1 RULES!? In a library!? Unthinkable.
2 The more realistic scenario being that you want to get your hands on that first edition of Dickens they have on display in the archives. But whatever.}

^{Original image by Mister Wind-up Bird on flickr.}

OK, so hopefully all of you that stop by here from time to time are functionally literate¹. I hazard a guess that most of my regular readers² are informationally literate, even if you don’t really know or care what that is. Heck, if called to testify before a Congressional hearing I might not even be able to explain it in full. But to hit the high points, most of you know how to evaluate your sources. Most of you probably understand where to start a search for information and follow a trail to satisfactory results. You can read words, yes, but you also know how to find and interpret information.

Blah, blah, blah. What’s the point? My ilk, librarians, have always been in the business of information. And thus, of information literacy. It has long been the purview of librarians to be experts at navigating, finding and conveying information. With the advent of a networked world it has become increasingly more important³ for us to teach people how to do what we do. Teach a man to fish, and all that.

This is the modern paradox. It has never been easier to access information. As a result, finding the right information and putting it to use has become an increasingly complex problem.  Note, that I don’t think using information has become prohibitively difficult – just that ways of collecting, using and interpreting data have changed. With so much information on computers and the ability to manipulate, transmit and aggregate it in so many ways there needs to be a way to wrangle all of this good stuff. And that way is computer code – PHP, Java, Ruby, Python and any number of public APIs⁴.

So far, all of this is great. We have lots of data, we have lots of ways to manipulate it, and there are lots of people who can do this. Anytime you post a story from CNN to Twitter, or share your Facebook feed through your phone or track swine flu on Google Maps you’re using harnessing code to manage or manipulate data. Moreover, you are doing this transparently – you don’t have to understand the code to use it.

But someone does. Code has always been a way libraries have wrangled data. Specifically through the use  MARC records⁵. MARC is transparent – you can use a library catalog without knowing what the 005 field means, or why the author information goes in subfield b. But it is not especially extensible. That is to say, you probably won’t be using Google Maps to find available copies of new best sellers in close proximity to where you happen to be.

The proliferation of data/information has requires a move to more flexible – cross platform – code. And  this, think some, is a make or break issue for libraries. We can make websites, we can promote programs but how do we make information about our physical holdings available outside of proprietary closed systems that read MARC data?

How do we make sure we call attention to all of the quality information we house without being passed over in favor of easy information? That is the crux of information literacy – finding good information efficiently. The more efficient the method the less likely quality of information matters.

This brings me to my final point⁶, the increasing role that code plays in the life of an information professional. There are numerous library projects out there trying to integrate physical holdings with online data. These include things like the Social Opac, the Extensible Catalog and Library Thing for Libraries.  More and more it seems that to do my job I not only need information literacy but technological literacy. In order to harness these technologies I need to understand at least a little of what’s going on under the hood.

Flexible code is the ubiquitous, unseen force behind almost all networked interaction these days. The proliferation of code is both an opportunity and a challenge. We have the tools to set data free in more ways than ever. But librarians are faced with a steep learning curve and the potential need for drastic adaptation of their job descriptions. I didn’t set out to become a computer programmer, but how much of what we do depends on that particular skill set? Can we just outsource this to the specialists – or a new type of sub-specialist within the profession? Finally, how do we adapt our code to the new Internet reality? It’s almost as if we have to create and release our own API for developers, hobbyists and professionals to manipulate our data. The questions are how do we do it, and can we do it in time?

^{1 But what do I know, you could just be here for the pretty pictures.
2 Whom I think I can count on about 1 1/2 hands.
3 Not that it was ever unimportant…
4 Application Programming Interface.
5 MARC: MAchine Readable Code
6 If you’re still even reading, thanks for humoring me.}

I think it was Confucius who first said “Love is a Battlefield.”¹ Wise words indeed. An no less applicable in the realm of human devotion than to the love of reading. Though you often can judge a book by its cover, you are never quite sure what you were going to get. So it was that I picked up The Lock Artist by Steve Hamilton. I was in search of a page turner – a quick read to clear the mental palate after some slightly heavier stuff² with which I had engaged my synapses.

What I expect out of these page turners is action, minimal dialogue and multiple – often predictable – plot twists. I tend toward crime/spy fiction for my fix and my guilty pleasure is Star Wars novels.³ At worst these books are the equivalent of a junk food binge. It sounds like a good idea at the time, you realize you are overdoing it about halfway through and by the end you’re bloated, cranky and remorseful. At best they are something like The Lock Artist.

The Lock Artist is pure recreation. You’re not going to do too much soul searching after this one. There isn’t too much insight into The Human Condition here. But, I think I mentioned up top that this sort of thing isn’t what I’m looking for here. The plot’s the thing and such niceties as character development, good writing and dramatic tension are all icing on the cake.

Fortunately, Hamilton ices his cakes pretty well. His two main hooks are a protagonist who is left mute from a childhood trauma and asynchronous storytelling⁴. Michael, or so he calls himself, is our protagonist and we meet him first in prison. His talent⁵ is an affinity for locks. Specifically, the ability to coax the combination from high-end safes. The kind of safes that criminals might want to relieve of their contents.

You really don’t need to know much more than that. This is the story. A kid, adopted by his uncle, traumatized in his youth, with an ability that makes him a commodity among big time gangsters and con artists. There is psychological tension, romantic intrigue and coming of age. The pace is fast and the characters unrepentant. At this point you’re either interested or your not. And if you are interested, I’m here to tell you it’s worth your time.

^{1 Or was that Socrates? Whatever.
2 Though nothing on the order of what my good friend Walter has been into recently
3 There. I said it.
4 Pretty simple really. We get the first half (childhood) of the plot told in alternating sequence with the second half (adult years).
5 Though it didn’t get him too far in life – he is in prison after all}

Adam Haslett’s Union Atlantic had been getting quite a bit of buzz, including the coveted Fresh Air interview.¹.  So I decided to grab it hot off the library shelf when it arrived.  Haslett’s first novel, following a critically acclaimed volume of short stories, is largely about the circumstances leading to the current financial crisis.

What I suspect garnered much of the attention for this novel is its setting several years previous to the actual – the historical – meltdown that currently reverberates through our lives lending it, for some, a feeling of prescience. Notable also is the meltdown’s proximity to the events of 9/11 and the subsequent second Iraq war. In essence Haslett has taken the three defining events of the past decade and squished them together for viewing through a literary lens.

Union Atlantic is Haslett’s view of our contemporary world. As such, he offers some critiques. His main character, Doug Fanning, is an ex-military² man turned ultra-rich banker. In some ways he is the poor boy made good but in others he is a symbol of morally barren America.  In the other corner is Charlotte Graves, a failed history teacher from old money who rages against what modern society has become as embodied by Doug Fanning. In between are a cast of characters who will be familiar to most readers in situations that should be as unsurprising as they are competently rendered.

Union Atlantic is engaging but flawed. Though Haslett’s work may well have been prescient when he began, the fact is that much of his tale feels familiar. What may have been a cautionary tale ends up being a simple retelling of what we have just lived through. Union Atlantic, the bank for which the novel takes its name, may have been a compelling character in its own right if we didn’t know so much about Bank of America, or Chase, or AIG or any number of other institutions Too Big To Fail. Instead it is just a grim rehashing of what we already know personified by characters who are no less likable in their personal lives than are their professional actions.

For all its hype, I came to Union Atlantic having read little about it and with few preconceived notions. The one snippet I had seen was the New York Times reviewer Michiko Kakutani’s review calling out the novel for being uneven. For much of the novel I scratched my head at this verdict. Sure, there are matters of taste, but the writing seemed coherent and the narrative had a confident stride. It wasn’t until the end that I finally realized the truth of Kakutani’s criticism.

Haslett has a sure hand with character and his scene depicting Massachusetts high society on the Fourth of July is one of the best I have read in recent memory.  But in the end, the story doesn’t cohere. For all the interconnectedness and tightly woven stories that begin the novel,  the characters simply dissipate into the mist. For all the bang that Haslett seems to point to, the final notes are more of a fizzle. Sure, this could be an indictment of the modern existential condition, but I don’t think that’s where Haslett had his sights set.

Union Atlantic points to Haslett’s skill as a short story writer.  He writes scene and character well but can’t seem to hold it together for the long haul.  He has little to offer in terms of insight to a public over-saturated with news coverage about what exactly happened to whom and why in the banking crisis³. Instead we are left with something that very much resembles a petting zoo.  Come see the local fauna. Ogle their rich/lavish/empty/principled lives. See them interact in their native habitat. This was enough to keep me reading but not enough for me to insist that you do the same.

^{1 Although honestly, God save us from Terry Gross already.
2 His military experience providing context for both the terrorist bombings and the brewing conflict in with Iraq.
3 And really, this probably isn’t his fault. But as they say, timing is everything.}

Today’s reading recommendation comes with a warning. So be warned – trying to read this book too fast, too soon will only result in heartbreak. But if you take it slow you will eventually win acclaim for your verbal virtuosity and win the unending love of your young one¹.

Yes, I’m talking about that old classic from old Mr. Geisel himself – Fox in Socks². And for all the blustery warnings about taking it slow, we start out OK. Seuss warms us up with the building blocks of his tongue-twisting tome.

See the mischief brewing in fox’s eyes as he ponders what kind of trouble he can cause with these innocuous items. See the placid look on unsuspecting Knox’s face – the calm before the linguistic storm that will contort his tongue, try his patience and, frankly, test credulity³.

Hear the simple rhymes that will bring a grin to your toddler’s face. “Fox in socks/ Knox in box;” “Knox in box ON Fox in Socks.” And it warms up slowly. We add chicks and clocks to the mix. “Let’s do tricks with bricks and blocks sir/ Let’s do tricks with chicks and clocks sir.”  And we progress to making quick trick brick stacks; quick trick chick stacks. Try reading that a few times quick. We’re just warming up.

I’ll spare the grisly details, but suffice it to say that it gets pretty tricky. To the point that Knox repeatedly bemoans his fate to that tricky Fox.

Undaunted, Fox continues to up the ante until Knox finally snaps. Rattling off on of the the longest, most complex tongue twisters in the book Knox tells fox where he can shove it and shows that for all his protestation he has been paying a little attention. Like his cousin in Green Eggs and Ham Knox realizes at the end that hey, this was a pretty good idea all along.

Good fun indeed and it is impossible to overstate that you must read this book aloud. So this one’s great for any kid who likes being read to and a good challenge for advanced readers still learning the craft.

Finally, a bonus video of two men who obviously practiced reading such books as loud and as fast as possible. Skip to about the 5:00 mark for the famous gravitas rematch, the ending of which puts even the trickiest passage of our humble kids book to shame⁴.

^{1 Though, to be fair, if you don’t have that yet, Dr. Seuss may not help you
2 Yeah, I know I’m not digging up new finds here every week. But this particular title is a favorite at home and I think gets passed up for many of Seuss’ more popular titles. So there.
3 I mean honestly, a “Goo Goose” and “Cheese Trees”. Come on.
4 Or, you know, watch the whole thing. Or none of it. I’m not the boss of you.}

Banks are failing, working men and women lose their jobs and paranoia about the future of the American economy is widespread. Sound a little like 2010? Think again. It’s the Great Depression and Thomas Mullen writes about the Fireson¹ brothers and their experience trying to survive economic and near-social collapse.

They were already worshiped during their bank-robbing spree between the spring of ‘33 and July of ‘34. They were already celebrities – heroes or villains depending on one’s position on the ever-shifting seesaw of the times – indistinguishable in fact from the many folktales chorusing around them. But they became so much more during a two-week spell in August of 1934 starting with the night they died. The night they died for the first time.

Mullen’s introduction leaves no doubt as to what this story is about. It is about  truth shrouded by myth. It is about hope and fear. It is about bank robbing.  Make no mistake – this book is about guns, broads, big scores, flatfoots, bootleggers and thieves. But it is also a book of sociology and of metaphysics.

One half of Mullen’s narrative is a straightforward account of a family coping with the Great Depression. Jason, the eldest of three Fireson boys, rebels early against his hardworking father and gets into the bootlegging game. Profitable, violent and risky, this gig lands him in jail for a couple of stints estranging him from family and introducing him to darker elements. After a curtailed final attempt at the straight life – one in which his erstwhile upstanding father falls prey to his darker nature – Jason uses his big house connections to become a bank robber, taking in middle brother Whit as an accomplice and leaving their youngest brother on the outside of the new family business.

Which brings us to the second half of Mullen’s narrative. It is a half narrative that runs parallel to the straight story. One that whispers of deep family bonds, brotherly affection, carnal love², sacrifice and most notably resurrection. Yes, the title of the novel means what it says.

The brothers’ first resurrection happens in basement morgue of a police station. Mystified at first, the brothers quickly adapt to their circumstance, planning jobs with the lingering expectation that death by lead bullet will be but temporary. Mullen does an excellent job transmogrifying the metaphor of public immortality into actual invulnerability to Death’s grim scythe. Throughout the text we are reminded of Dillinger and others infamously gunned down who live on, much like Elvis would later in the century in newspaper and eyewitness sightings.

But the Firefly brothers live on in lore as their corporeal forms stick around to stay in on the joke. The inescapable puzzle is why? Why do they die grisly deaths under dire circumstances just to rise and do it all again? What unfinished business do they have on this mortal coil? What of redemption³? Most, though not all, is revealed in time and Mullen allows the piece to breathe. He gives his readers just enough rope to leave themselves dangling from the rafters of meaning and conclusion. The ending satisfies without solving. The actual rubble of the Fireson’s last known hideout is indistinguishable from the moral rubble of the brother’s crimes.

By the end of the novel prohibition has been repealed, America is on it’s way out of economic collapse and J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI is ascendant.  But lives remain unaccounted for, the undercurrent of civil unrest still flows and whispers continue that the Fireson’s may yet live in more than just the public imagination. Spend some time with this fine novel of America during the Great Depression and you will be richly rewarded with action, adventure, intrigue, metaphysics, mysticism⁴ and social commentary. All in a day’s work.

^{1 Dubbed, ultimately, by a media hungry for spectacle “The Firefly Brothers.”
2 The aforementioned broads.
3 Don’t be disappointed – you’ll not find much of that.
4 Though who are we to say that these two are not one and the same?}

Belonging is an eternal struggle for most of us, especially in our youth.  Using simplicity in both illustration and story Leo Lionni tells a touching story about belonging, friendship and acceptance. A Color of His Own starts out with the universal truth that “all animals have a color of their own”

Except for Chameleons¹. Chameleons, we learn, change color wherever they go. Lionni catalogs the various circumstances upon which chameleons might change color, including the haiku-like line “and on the tiger they are striped like tigers.” And it is, in fact, on such a tiger that we meet our protagonist -the chameleon who longs for a color of his own.

So he decides to stay put, hoping that physical stasis will result in the color fastness he so desires. Unfortunately, he decides that if he remains on a leaf he will be green forever. Of course:

Oops. Had the chameleon simply chosen, say, a red wagon his wish may have come true². After a long winter of discontent, Spring comes and he meets an older, wiser chameleon. Plaintively he queries, “Won’t we ever have a color of our own?³:

The older chameleon, full of understanding⁴, breaks the news softly. No, they will never have a color of their own, but if they stick together they will share both color and solace in their solidarity. And so it is that the chameleons change color wherever they go. They are yellow together, purple together and red with white polka dots together. And like many good stories, they live happily ever after⁵.

^{1 And certain marine invertebrates, iguanas and maybe a few others. Are we gonna split hairs?
2 At least until the decision to stay one color or starve presented itself. Maybe it’s better he chose a leaf…
3 What is he expecting? Some sort of Chameleon civil rights movement?
4 It must be that all chameleons pass through this phase and only age and experience bring acceptance.
5 Or, as the Beatles remind us – “All you need is love.”}

Reading dead white guys (DWGs) is passe, if not downright anti- this & that. Leave some Conrad or Mailer on your table, you’re surely a scoundrel. I base this loosely on schooling and past retail experience, the latter involving an intellectual comaraderie well-suited to judgment. In college, and largely still, I read a lot of current fiction.¹ A healthy dose of these are Native American authors, owing to an inscrutable professor² of that literature in college, who also turned me onto my other fiction-passion: Jews. I branch into other Eastern European authors, but at heart I want the Yid perspective. A course in comparative African literature left lingering interest in the literatures of that continent.³ So aside from some honkeys like DeLillo, O’Brien, Vonnegut, and Barth (I’ll leave Pynchon for Conan, out of deference), most of my reading post-college has been of authors like Szjkvldstykstzkskz.⁴

The above is unnecessary, really; my point follows. I was inspired to writing by Conan’s recent post about The Swan Thieves. While he described exiting a book in abject misery, really just giving up, I was, how should we say, in-the-text. I was living it up, wallowing in the Word. I didn’t want to rub C’s nose in it then (well, sort of), but he’s of thick hide it would seem. That specific Good Prose was Barth’s The Development which I recommend. Curiously, next I brought home a stack from my public library of E.B. White and John Cheever, white guys dead and buried both. I looked at them. What’s come over me, I thought? I turn 30 and look here. Looking back reveals a pattern. Over Christmas I crossed the ponde to scan some Wodehouse – gasp! Last summer I picked my way through Ten short modern novels, reading several authors notorious for lacking melanin but holding a y chromosome: Faulkner, Mann, Gide. And last winter, gobs of Stephen Crane (M verily forced it on me, but I loved it). Hmm, I wondered.

I promised a point; I’ll attempt delivery. Lately I’ve been in John Cheever’s Journals and E.B. White’s Letters & Writings from the New Yorker. I’ve never read any Cheever that I recollect. His covers are awesome, so here we are. The Journals interest me for several reasons. It’s the prose behind the prose, the ‘inner writing’ of a professional writer, that still reads on the page as professional and inspired writing. I guess that’s talent? It is interesting to glimpse what concerns a novelist in the day to day: money, family, writers’ block (writing well about writers’ block…), alcohol, sex. Other entries are splendid  mini-stories, really sublime. Surely the journal is a writer’s device to aid creativity.

Now White. Again, save the children’s classics and his little grammar aid, I can’t recall reading any E.B. His prose is concise but not proud. There would seem little chance for self-deprication in such style, but it surfaces beautifully, and we see in White’s brevity humanity at once arresting, personal, and universal. Read ‘Hunger’ where the narrator bumps into an old friend starving himself to death because he’s increasingly paranoid about what lurks in our food. It’s absurd, but it reveals systemic societal paranoia, some founded some not. Kudos. Read ‘Tomorrow Snow’ where a diner waiter delivers heavy news:

“I’ve been listening to the radio,” he said. “Tomorrow snow, turning to rain.” He was a man carrying foreknowledge in his breast, and the pain was almost unbearable. We don’t remember a winter when people followed the elements so closely and when foreknowledge so completely destroyed any chance of momentary bliss.⁵

I nearly cried reading this late one night, after yet another day of scraping the frozen muck the plow spreads back across my driveway each morning. This has been a winter of great Sisyphean shoveling here. You’ll note I employed the same tactic as White, I envied it so: I nearly cried, like the waiter’s pain was almost unbearable. White belies a stoicism that attracts me. We suffer through, this is our predicament, all that jazz. Updike, another DWG, introduces the Letters and hints at a nervous condition that kept White on edge, or something like that. White’s New Yorker writings intimate this, from the food paranoia to a piece on dizziness. My Personal Private Affliction puts my world topsy-turvy too, leaves me reeling from the sun, and I delight in well-wrought prose capturing similar experience. Nothing is mentioned in White of migraine save for the odd ‘headache’ reference in letters. New Yorker editor Harold Ross allegedly said of Thurber and White, “Look at them, my two best writers, one can’t see to cross the street and the other is afraid to.”⁶ So I pretend a comrade and commiserate. Content aside, White’s prose, for those of us here at Literary Gibberish who revel in such matters, is downright breezy. Browse a passage and marvel at the space between words where you surely would have put words. ‘Omit needless words’ is a Strunk and White rule. Right ho!

Reading this stuff of late I am transcended, I am on a plane I can only describe– like earlier– as refreshingly in-the-text, a sort of formalist mind ill aware of the politics of DWGs nor any other critical meta whatnots. Reader, surely I lie– I earlier described White the humanist and hinted at a fictional narrator submerged in Cheever’s Journals; my training won’t be stymied. But this is pleasurable, heavenly, delightful reading so elegantly wrought that looking upon it is much like appreciating distinctly American furniture– far from lacking refinement in its understated forms and simple designs.

^{1 Mostly post-WWII, so comparably current in the span of English Letters.
2 RMN
3 Black, White, Afrikaaner esp.
4 Not real
5 Writings, 6.
6 Letters, photo insert.}

Long has it been the pleasure of those not part of the establishment to knock – when possible – the elite from their metaphorical¹ high horse. And so we arrive in this strange geometrical kingdom where the royalty seems borderline narcoleptic. What’s this!? Asleep with a kingdom to run? Surely this is a problem that no longer afflicts us this modern day!

Your task this Friday is to awaken these slothful royals and goad them to action. The mechanics are those of a traditional physics puzzle but instead of stacking pieces you combine them. As the game advances the Rube Goldberg machines get more complex and the puzzles a bit more tricky. But the satisfaction of knocking these peacocks off their perch never wanes. That’s about the sum of it folks. Happy weekend!

^{1 and sometimes even actual.}

^{logical chaos by tigerplish}

In case you missed it, Google just announced a plan to install 100Gb fiberoptic networks in several communities nationwide. Say what now? 100 what? Fiberoptic who? In brief, this is plan to bestow¹ upon a number of unsuspecting citizens internet access at a speed that runs circles around Verizon’s Fios service, currently the fastest commercial internet available to any significant number of customers.

“OK, so where do I fit in” you may ask? Well, I’m glad you did. There’s a current belief² that much of what troubles the American Economy may find its remedy in widespread availability/affordability of broadband access. There is even a bit of a groundswell in the philanthropic realm to begin providing such access to rural communities³. And as someone in the so-called trenches of one such rural community I sit firmly in the camp that believes expanded access is not just an economic but a social imperative.

Every day, in numbers that continue to rise we see people coming in to use our computers. Many of them are surfing facebook but many others are applying for jobs, updating their resumes, looking for services and filing for unemployment. Why do they come here? Internet in our county is expensive and slow. The fastest “broadband” speed available to residential customers is relatively pokey DSL.

Still confused about how this affects you, dear reader? Setting aside discussion about whether we view it as essential that one be able to facebook, youtube, email and other such activity⁴, we now live in a world where you need online access and computer skills to apply for a shelf stocking job at Food Lion. Setting aside, again, the fact that those with the most need and the least access pay the highest price in this game we see that internet access is quickly becoming a necessity of everyday life.

And trust me, it ain’t getting any less necessary anytime soon. Which brings us back to Google, and eventually libraries. What Google seems to be doing is firing a shot across the bow of telcom companies who often find themselves in a monopoly situation⁵. By showing an alternative way of building infrastructure – partnering with communities – and offering competitive prices for superior speed Google is challenging the current economic model. And here’s hoping it works.

Finally, back to libraries. I’ts always going to come back to libraries around here. Happily, my library has just finalized paperwork that will bring 10Mb/sec fiberoptic internet to county residents at our six locations. Although we currently provide faster internet than many people have access to the county, this will give our people faster access with fewer interruptions in service⁶ in an economic climate where whenever we can provide more we should.

Libraries are always going to be a stop-gap for the underprivileged and those in the greatest need. This is often a source of satisfaction and frustration in my day-to-day. But by providing this service we, like Google, will hopefully start to exert some economic pressure in some meaningful way. Perhaps the more projects we see like the one from Google and the more institutions (read: libraries) that offer these types of speeds the more people will come to expect broadband saturation. And that’s good for everyone.

So what do you think? Is expanding broadband speed and access for everyone a priority? How dependent have you become on having ready access to the internets? Are you now planning to petition Google to bring fiber to your neighborhood? Discuss in the comments.

^{1 I use the word bestow in a limited sense – the big Goog does plan to charge for this access, but promises “a competitive price” to between 50,000 and 500,000 customers.
2 evangelical and wild-eyed though it may be…
3 full disclosure: my place of employ is included as a beneficiary in the linked grant.
4 Yes, I argue – and this may end up as its own post.
5 Sure, I can choose between Verizon and Comcast, but the choice is between slow (Verizon) and expensive (Comcast).
6 Heavy YouTube use still drags our network to a crawl.}

For anyone living in the greater Mid-Atlantic region¹ we probably need do no more than post the book cover with no further comment:

And yet as a blog dedicated to both visual image and written word I should add my own boilerplate². In The Snowy Day Ezra Jack Keats reminds why snow is one of the cardinal joys of childhood. If, as we like to imagine, childhood is an idyll – a time to play without inhibition and wander around aimlessly – then what better venue for this than a city snowed to a standstill? We open the book and read that

One morning Peter woke up and looked out the window. Snow had fallen during the night. It covered everything as far as he could see.

This, we find, is a great boon to Peter who promptly sets out to take full advantage of his situation. Clad in his snowsuit and mittens, the snowy world is his oyster:

But as all great literature must do, The Snowy Day, keeps us grounded – reminding us that all of childhood is not idyllic. Challenges abide, even for the young and carefree. To wit: young Peter sees some older boys engaged in combat³ using against each other the very matter that the beneficent sky gods have showered upon them. Upon quick evaluation Peter decides it’s best to steer clear of the older boys for now.

Instead he decides to stockpile some of this frozen manna for a warmer day:

Ah, the bittersweet optimism of youth. Of course the snow brought inside vanishes into a liquid pool, but oh what a ride we had while it was with us!  I recommend a glance through The Snowy Day for all of us who view these mountains of snow through adult eyes. For those of us who dig, and dig, and dig, just to free our vehicles for the next day’s labor. For those of us who sigh at the thought of being cooped up inside with those we love⁴ for hours on end. For those of us faced with this:

But yearning to re-live this:

Happy reading, and stay warm!

^{1 Or, you know, watches CNN or the Weather Channel…
2 Come on folks, this is another Caldecott. These books should recommend themselves
3 Mortal Combat, one can only assume.
4 and who inevitably drive us nuts with extended time in close quarters.}

What’s that they say about being good for the goose? If you want to survive Endless Migration you’d better be quick or those nasty planes, storms, helicopters and blimps will surely get your gander.

Your task is pretty simple. As flock leader your job is collect wayward geese who will obediently follow you in the classic flying V pattern. Unfortunately it looks like the air traffic controllers are on strike and Reagan isn’t around to order in the scabs. Look out above and below for all manner of flying craft and storms that will slow your progress. As your get deeper into your journey the air gets thicker and even the military gets involved¹.

What gives this game a little more replay value than most dodge-and-dash avoidance games is the ability to earn upgrades. Faster wings, friendlier geese and even temporary invincibility are rewards for perseverance and each upgrade it worth it’s weight in feathers. Earn enough points for all of them and you’re a lean, mean flying machine.

So watch your back, protect your flock and let the feather’s fly! How long will you last in Endless Migration?

^{1 look out for quickly-vanishing stealth bombers!}

In the realm of oddball comedic writing that staunchly resists easy categorization Jasper Fforde is king.  The bulk of his work consists of re-imagining such literary lives as those of Humpty Dumpty, Jane Eyre, Miss Havisham and others.  Fforde creates for his characters richly described worlds with labyrinthine systems of rules and social strata. In short, he makes hay of literary tropes, characters and historical “what-ifs”, all the while paying homage to the giants of the English language on whose shoulders he stands.

Shades of Grey is in some ways a bird of *ahem* a different color. However, fans of Fforde’s work will feel at home with his zany approach to reality that keeps the reader just off balance enough to make a straightforward story feel like a bit of a wild ride.

The curtain opens on young Eddie Russet who is a “Red” by dint of his being able to see color primarily in the (you guessed it) red frequencies of the color spectrum. Eddie’s world is color-0bsessed and we find that class hierarchies follow from left to right the familiar acronym ROYGBIV where Reds are the lower middle class, Yellows the administrative class, Greens the privileged middle class and Blue-Indigo-Violets forming what there is of an Aristocracy. Oh, and the Greys are the proletariat.

We also see quickly that there is room for mobility – a Red may well marry a Blue and sire offspring who see the world through genteel purple colored lenses. And this results in something of a social bartering system wherein “strong reds” may marry into a declining blue family to solidify the line. In exchange for an appropriate amount of credits, of course.

As in his other works, Fforde builds a world with strict rules that must not be broken and strange circumstances that dictate the activity of his characters lives. Why, we ask, are spoons in such short supply? How do the residents of this world mine scraps from a disappeared civilization¹ and then pipe it into towns to color gardens, street signs and buildings? Why is it that a particular swatch of color has the power to heal, harm, enthrall or even euthanize its viewer?

As in all dystopian visions the world Eddie Russet inhabits is broken. As in all bildungsromans Eddie progresses from naivete to knowlege.  The name of progress is attached to regressive policies that benefit the powerful and oppress the lower class. The denouement of the book is a social awakening that a Washington Post reviewer points out is evident from hundreds of pages away. But rather than grouse that this is a disappointment, I propose that we celebrate an old tale originally told.

The plot of Shades of Grey is well worn but the execution gives it some shine. Fans of Fforde will feel at home in this novel and new readers will, perhaps, be drawn in². Is this a Staggering Work of Genius? No, but it’s a heck of a good tale not only about social dysfunction but also about coming of age, of love and of loss.  Best of all it will keep you reading through these cold winter nights and snowy winter days that seem to be playing in an endless loop around these parts this winter. Happy reading!

^{1 Our own modern world, dear reader.
2 Surely herr Fforde hopes so, as this is the first volume of a planned trilogy.}

In What’s That Noise? William Carman tackles that ever vexing question – just what exactly is it that keeps going Bump! in the night? Except in Carman’s rendition, it’s more like going “GGGGBBBBrrrrrvvccxxxxgggggiiiinnnnnbbbbbggg” in the night. Our hero is a young man who hears a noise and intrepidly seeks its source, giving the book a title in his incessant query “What’s that noise!?”

What indeed? The young lad’s imagination is fueled by everyday objects in his house and rendered on the page in fantastical black and white after each suggestion is proffered. His thoughts range from the mundane (are the neighbors mowing the lawn?) to the outlandish (is it a UFO landing in my back yard?) and even the truly terrifying (it sounds like a bear in mom and dad’s room!). Carman even nods to the motif of monster in the closet and throws in a slightly surreal octopus sighting.

And like all decent bedtime stories this one ends happily. No, it’s not a bear in Mom and Dad’s room – it’s just Dad snoring the night away oblivious to all the commotion he’s causing throughout the household.  All is well as we turn the final page and see Mom, Dad and son sleeping peacefully and snore-free on the book’s endpaper.

Thus ends another recommendation¹. The art and story both stand out in this one and you’ll want to head over to this interview at Seven Impossible Things and to William Carman’s own plot of real estate on the web to see more. Until next time…

^{And almost footnote free. You didn’t think you’d get off that easy did you?}

Modern day American prophet Wendell Berry declares to us that “work done thankfully and well is prayer.” The Apostle Paul suggests to us that we should “pray without ceasing.” Are we then to infer that taking a short recreational break is verboten? Nonsense!  Please amuse yourself¹ with Grayscale – a maze puzzle game of increasing complexity.

Your aim, as ever, is to get from Point A to Point B. Follow your chosen path, rotate the gears that stand in your way and revel in your success when you achieve Nirvana². So hip, hip and Cheerio to you my dear readers. Enjoy your weekly diversion and stay tuned for further updates.

^{1 always in moderation, of course.
2 enlightenment is fleeting as the next level inevitably presents itself}

Clive Thompson, frequent Wired contributor and blogger at Collision Detection reports that according to website Hunch “TV and education are almost perfectly inversely correlated.”

I won’t go through the numbers, percentages, etc.¹ but two baselines for TV viewing within these metrics appear to be two hours per day and four hours per day. Sweet Jeebus! We might watch four hours of television per week. That is to say that we have about six shows that we try and see every week and have our TiVo dutifully record. We then plow through them, commercial-free, in the brief time between getting Zeke to bed, and succumbing ourselves to the day’s weariness.

So, with three masters degrees between us, K and I seem to give credence to this notion that More Education = Less TV. Or does it? Thompson rightly points out that while this is interesting data, there’s a lot more going on here. He, for instance, came of age² in environs lacking easy television access. His habits thus cemented, he watches very little TV in his adulthood.

I submit to you that the reason K and I watch very little TV these days has little to do with education or formed habits and everything to do with having a two-year old in the house. Morning television is out of the question as we race to shower, dress, eat and get out the door on time. Zeke gets to watch a spot of tele in the evening as K prepares dinner. Then as soon as I get home we eat, play for a while and then head straight upstairs for bath time, jammies and books for Zeke. By the time he’s safely ensconced in dreamland, neither K or I has stopped to breathe for more than about 20 minutes during the day and it’s time to sit, debrief, play online and/or watch television. I assure you that there is not a spare four hours each day for us to watch the tube even if we wanted to.

Which brings me to the story I wanted to tell in the first place. Last week we decided it was time to join the 21st Century and buy a large flat screen television. After spending much of a day off running between stores and comparing prices we brought home a 42″ plasma at a pretty good price. We then set it up realized it was way too big and were underwhelmed by a standard definition picture on a high definition TV.

We dutifully researched the exorbitant prices that Comcast would charge us to upgrade from basic³ to any sort of HD package and realized that this $600 TV was going to cost us far more than that initial cost in the long run. This information in hand, we calculated the value of cable service over the 4-5 hours per week of television and promptly took advantage of Costco’s generous return policy.

Do you, my educated readers, view less television than the unwashed masses that surround you? Is it because you’re wicked-smaaht, or do other factors come into play? Or do you watch far more? Weigh in with your comments, and go visit Hunch for more crowd-sourced conversation starters.

^{1 that’s what the link is there for, silly.
2 went to college
3 veeeeerrry basic.}

My friend Rabbit means well, but everything he does, everywhere he goes…trouble follows.

And this is, almost the entirety of Erich Rohmann’s text for the Caldecott¹ award winning My Friend Rabbit.

What the book lacks in prose it makes up for in visual story. It’s a simple tale of friendship, mayhem and just-missed mauling that will warm the heart of your² animal loving offspring. Listen to your toddler gasp as the intrepid rabbit stacks the great beasts of the world high in an attempt to retrieve a wayward airplane. Cover your eyes like the young ducklings as three or four metric tons of wildlife come crashing down.

Take comfort in Rabbit’s calm demeanor as he says “Not to worry Mouse. I’ve got an idea” just before everything inevitably goes to pot.

But most of all enjoy the illustrations and the Rohmann’s minimalist approach to telling a complex tale of friendship and perserverance.

^{1 I know, real original recommending a book that’s won a freaking Caldecott. So sue me.
2 read: my}

Having access to the bowels of the cataloging department occasionally¹ comes in handy. Especially at such times where a book by an author you enjoy comes in a week before the publication date an the catalogers have affixed all appropriate stickers and metadata. Finding Elizabeth Kostova’s The Swan Thieves was, I thought, just such an occasion.

Turns out that I was wrong. This is a book I kind of stumbled upon – I didn’t really know it was coming out and I hadn’t read any of the prepub reviews. Kostova’s The Historian is a book I similarly stumbled upon and ended up truly enjoying. I figured with that track record The Swan Thieves was a pretty safe bet.

I should have known I was in trouble within the first few chapters when the prose was not up to snuff. Having since returned the book to circulation I don’t have it in front of my to cite² but suffice it to say that cliche was abundant and at several places the writing called to mind treacly fiction aimed primarily at teens. Like The Historian the narrative bounces back-and-forth between present day and the historical record via a collection of old letters. Unlike in Kostova’s first novel, however, the narrative doesn’t seem to move toward convergence. Insead, we see the characters moving in parallel without a compelling resolution in sight.

In a positive review of the book – a review that takes the minority position, it seems – Laura Miller writes,

[Kostova] has placed her faith in the conviction that readers are pleased to sink slowly into a novel, until the world it conjures has closed over their heads, submerging them entirely.

I am indeed willing to sink slowly into a novel, but 200 pages into The Swan Thieves I felt like I was still splashing around in the shallows. This may be blamed on many things including your fair reviewer’s temperament, the author’s subject matter or just poor writing. I don’t really want to throw stones, but this plot and these characters just didn’t do it for me.

By all means read The Historian and if you don’t mind slow-developing action give The Swan Thieves a shot. It just didn’t work for me. Several times, book in hand, I looked to my wife and said the following words – “I really wish I liked this novel.” By the third or fourth time I was finally able to admit that I didn’t.

^{1 Actually, it comes in handy quite often.
2 I wasn’t really planning to review it, but figured I’d offer this public service.}

Does it count as a day of service if the service you are providing is to your own household? Probably not, huh? Anyway, with apologies to Dr. King the wife and I spent much of his holiday yesterday purging our home of detritus, followed by the purchase and subsequent return of a big-ass¹ TV.  But that’s another post altogether. This is just to say that my kid’s book recommendation went un-posted for the day.

So please accept for your young’uns aural pleasure a day late but not exactly a dollar short, One More Sheep by Mij Kelly (author) and Russell Ayto (illustrator).

One More Sheep is a rhyming book that also teaches your spawn to count to ten. Or at least that’s what the media² would have you believe.  In reality it’s an entertaining and well illustrated tale about a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Two things stand out – rhymed verse that actually scans (unlike the perhaps more famous kid’s book that will remain unnamed³) and striking artwork. Oh, and pretty great use of the language – you gotta love any book with the following couplet:

Out on the moor the wind whistles and wuthered / while the sheep safe indoors huddled under the covers.

Kelly and Ayto set the verbal and visual tone from the beginning of the book and follow through with an entertaining tale about the boring nature of sheep:

You’re not all that interesting, you’re not all that odd / you’re a first class ticket to the land of Nod.

The widsom (or lack thereof) of being uncritical in letting in strange sheep:

Stop it right there Sam, you silly man / you’ve got the brains of a watering can!

and the palliative power of counting:

After all that fuss and fluster Sam couldn’t get to sleep / until he settled right down and counted his boring sheep.

And the artwork captures beautifully the barren nature of the wet windy moor alongside the charming domesticity of a man who lives with a bunch of sheep⁴. There is even a bit of self-referential play at work when the artist hangs a work by Mondrian⁵ in Sam’s home – an overt nod to the artist for whom the book’s landscape is an apparent homage.

This one’s another keeper. Teach your kids about counting sheep to go to sleep, not letting wolves into the house and even squeeze in some art appreciation. All in a days work.

^{1 Yes, I believe that’s the technical term
2 as always, I blame the media
3 though not unlinked
4 Ok, ok – no Scottish jokes in the comment section please
5}

Canabalt ushers in the return of the Friday Fun ‘n’ Games to this webspace. You are a low-resolution animated figure who bursts out of his high rise office building to begin a dramatic escape. An escape from what? You pick: overbearing boss, zombies¹, your least favorite co-worker who’s desk the fates have placed not three feet from yours², or perhaps just regular old office boredom.

Point is, you must flee. And doing so is as simple as clicking your mouse to hurdle obstacles, avoid bombs³ and jump – like superman – tall buildings. As simple as it is addictive, the only goal is to run as far and as fast as you can until your attempt at flight inevitably comes up short. Yes, the only victories here are moral victories for there is no real escape. The zombies will win, your co-worker is inching her desk ever closer and the mind-numbing doldrums of your workplace will inevitably crush you. Except for the few moments per day when you seek respite in such leisure escapism as Canabalt⁴. You’ve been warned.

^{1 always popular
2 my favorite
3 so maybe you’re fleeing genocide
4 also available for your mobile gaming pleasure on the iphone}

Within the intersecting area of the Venn diagram consisting of movies I like and movies my wife likes live a very small number of genres largely made up of romantic comedies and, for lack of a better description, heist movies.  In general this works out since neither of us is particularly abashed of watching a DVD alone, or even of the occasional solo trip to the movie theater. It can, however, get a little dull to watch the same few plots play out with only mildly entertaining twists time after time.

Enter 500 Days of Summer:

Now, before we get carried away let’s set the parameters on this one. It’s a romantic comedy. Not necessarily a traditional one, and not one where all loose ends get tied up but a romantic comedy nonetheless.  So what sets it apart from the 25,000 other romantic comedies released each year? It’s smart, well-done and includes a musical dance number¹.

500 Days of Summer hooked me immediately with the image of the happy couple sitting on a park bench, holding hands, with a zoom to a shiny engagement ring. The rub? This was only Day 473². Our immediate reaction to this number is “uh-oh, this movie doesn’t end with them together.  The narrative then proceeds to jump around in its chronology skipping between Good Days and Bad Days as we piece together the love story.  Such antics could be dismissed as a quirky device to make a standard plot a little more interesting. Except for the opening shot, an announcement by a narrator and perhaps even the title of the film letting us in on the secret that “this is not a love story.”

So, we’re left to figure out how it falls apart and what makes the story interesting between days 1 and 500. I won’t give the ending away any more than the director does at the outset of the film. The boy (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) meets the girl (Zooey Deschanel) while working at an L.A. based greeting card company. He believes in true love³, based largely on a misreading of The Graduate in early adolescence. She believes in living day-to-day and not putting labels on things. Inevitably, the boy falls in love and the girl feels hemmed in. This isn’t new territory by any means.

Ultimately for me this movie succeeds on a visceral level. The movie just seems to get everything right. For much of the story our leads are cardboard cutouts, but they are likable cutouts. The bit players complement the film perfectly, including the karaoke-mad co-worker and the Nietzsche-quoting 12 year-old sister. And every time you want to dismiss the wardrobe as silly hipster posturing, Deschanel or Gordon-Levitt appear on screen dressed not as irreverent youth but as young professionals paying homage the the Hollywood greats that still haunt the streets they walk.

The movie had me interested from the outset, but the point at which I declared, finally, “I like this movie” was during the musical number about halfway through. The film perfectly balances the strum und drang⁴ that plagues single folk with the unselfconscious joy of being in love. We’re in this for a good time and to tell a story. And really, there’s not much else you can ask of a movie⁵. The couple doesn’t end up together, all loose ends are not tied up. But by the end of the film you feel that the boy-meets-girl story had a good run and even though things didn’t quite work out as planned it may just be possible to survive love and life in Tinseltown.

^{1 And you can ask my wife I DO NOT like musicals, but in this movie? I works.
2 or thereabouts, I didn’t take notes so I’m doing this from a week-old memory of viewing the film
3 and the movie makes adequate hay from the irony of this and the way that he trivializes it in his profession
4 or, in the parlance of our times, emo
5 especially in this genre}