The library received 16000 new books this week. While I gibber into thin air for a bit, you can get ready for a new edition of Bibliophile.
Harnessing the power of equine assisted counseling : adding animal assisted therapy to your practice / [edited by] Kay Trotter. New York : Brunner-Routledge, 2011.
A horse is a horse, of course, of course, and nobody can talk to a horse, of course. That is, of course, unless the horse is the famous Dr. Ed, trained at Stanford in the Freudian method. ...Sorry.
Releasing the image : from literature to new media / edited by Jacques Khalip and Robert Mitchell.
An anthology on the self-generative potential of images, particularly in terms of how they move beyond subjectivity. The description references Heidegger, Husserl, Merle-Ponty and Gilles Deleuze, and one of the of the editors is Agamben, so I'm guessing it's very easy, light reading. Highlights in the table of contents include what seem to be a cognitive science themed paper from Mark Hansen, and a Sobchack on sound and Dolby technology. It would probably make a nice accompaniment to two books I read recently--Mitchell's Picture Theory, and Wolfe's What is Posthumanism--but I really don't have much an interest in object-oriented ontology and so forth.
Smangus : Tnunan Smangus : the mutual enjoyment, preservation and appreciation of Smangus / by Lahuy Icyeh ; project team, The Community Council of Smangus.
Smangus sounds like it's slang for... you know. Mary Jay. Bammy. Chillums. Moocah. Bambalacha. C'mon on, man. Give me a hit of Smangus. No way, bro! Stop bogartting my Smangus! And so forth. In actually, it seems to a be a village in Taiwan, and not related to any sort of drug whatsoever.
I'm gathering that part of the new database access is oriented towards Canadian First Nation studies, as I've just gone over 400 straight items on the subject. But then, 400 is a drop in the bucket when you've got over 16000 items, so there'll be more yet. Yay? Well, that seems to be the pattern of this new infusion: a large collection of Canadian related material. Didn't we just have one of those? (Checks files) Yep, two weeks ago. Well, welcome back to January 29th, folks.
Not even the games section (call number GV) is immune to the influx of Canadiana:
What makes a neighbourhood bikeable: reporting on the results of focus group sessions / prepared by Meghan Winters, Adam Cooper.
From fun to functional: cycling, a mode of transportation in its own right : bicycle policy. Rev. ed. Québec, Qué. : Transports Québec, 2008
Ontario 2012: stimulating growth in Ontario's digital game industry.
Wilder West : rodeo in Western Canada / Mary-Ellen Kelm.
It's funny--these are all topics that interest me (all right, not so much the rodeo one), but as soon as you put it in a national context, it starts to lose its appeal.
Research without (southern) borders : the changing Canadian research landscape : a national roundtable on new directions in international research in Canada, May 22-23, 2003 : final report / IDRC.
I do like the joke in the title there.
Big spenders? [electronic resource] : an expenditure profile of Western Canada's big six / Casey Vander Ploeg. Calgary, Alta. : Canada West Foundation, 2004.
Essentially, the paper looks briefly at the spending habits of the largest Western Canadian cities. While spending has gone up, spending per capita has not, which means that our expenditures are not increasing at a rate proportional to population growth. Further, spending on municipal programs has not gone up overall per capita, but the program that sees the most growth is policing, which reflects municipal responsibilities. The disproportionate lack of increase in program funding suggests that in the future, we risk a decline in services, and... I'm sorry, I really can't fake the interest level to read any further. It's an important issue, vital to the future of Western (and by extension, all of) Canada, and it's about as exciting as... as... reading an expenditure profile of Western Canada's big six. I'm sorry; I honestly couldn't think of anything more boring than this. It's created a new watermark, all by itself.
Mexico: current and future political, economic and security trends / by Hal Klepak. Calgary, Alta. : Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute, 2008
Judging purely by the publisher, I like to believe that this book is a frank assessment of the military threat posed by Mexico. What it's actually about is a briefing on the current state of Mexico, in terms of politics, economics, and security, particularly in terms of its rather well-armed and organized drug trade. This relates to what the author sees is Mexico's biggest issue: improving its public issue regarding the control it can exert over illegal groups. ...2500 works into this week, it's really nice to see something that's not about Canada. That is all.
Citizen is willing, but society won't deliver [electronic resource] : the problem of institutional roadblocks / Norman Myers and Jennifer Kent. Winnipeg, Man. : International Institute for Sustainable Development, c2008
Consumer demands are creating unsustainable consumption patterns, and the institutions that should be stepping up to prevent such waste are failing to do so on a global scale. It feels a little like shifting the blame in a way to cater to the wider population--it's not your fault you're wasteful, it's the government--but judging by the first few papers, it's written in a rather compelling manner, and it's a nice introduction to the general subject of global governance. It's also an economic book that isn't pretending that such issues can be sorted out by the Invisible Hand, which is in its favor.... At the same time, it's radically out of my usual reading zone. I'm pretty desperate for non-Canadian entries at this point. And I'm still not even a quarter done.
...You know what? Let's try something different. I'll keep working on this, but I'll break it up into those four parts, and release them over the following week. Rather than having to read one indigestible superpost, you readers can have four slightly more manageable ones. Worst case scenario, you'll have to skip over four posts instead of the usual one. Yeah, you're welcome. So I'll do another thousand entries, and then we'll call it quits for today.
Shocking aspects of Canadian labor markets/ Tamim Bayoumi, Bennett Sutton, and Andrew Swiston. Washington, D.C. : International Monetary Fund, 2006
Yeah, I'll bite. What makes it shocking? Nothing, apparently; the title's a mislead, and it's about how the Canadian labor markets respond to shocks. You tricked me, International Monetary Fund. That's one.
And that final entry brings us to the end of the first 4000 entries. Who knows what mysteries lie in the next 12 000? More books on the state of Canadian economic policies? Something on the intricacies of Canadian educational policies for Saskatchewan immigrant populations? We all wait with bated breath, I'm sure. See in the future, folks.
Later Days.
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Friday, February 10, 2012
Friday Random Quotations: I Could See Tracy Morgan as a castmember of Boondocks
"Guys like us have to pick low-hanging fruit. We look like Far Side characters!" --Frank, 30 Rock.
Later Days.
Later Days.
Thursday, February 9, 2012
It's Not Your Fault, It's Mayan.
I must be tired. I just typed out "The Lost Myna City in South America." And now I'm picturing a massive empire composed entirely of twigs, where tiny birds sacrificed other tiny birds to appease their tiny bird gods.
Later Days.
Later Days.
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Lost in Transit-ions
I needed to a university-related meeting today, which was held at one of the downtown tech hubs. In theory, I fully approve of the hub meetings. It gets the department associated with cutting edge movements in tech, and gets us out and into the community, a constant necessity for an academic department. In practice... well, the hub is 10 km from my house, and 7.5 from campus. Now, granted, I'm already on campus, so that's a reduction in transit time right there. But I still have to travel on the bus from campus to hub, and then back again to teach my class. Even at a conservative estimate, that's over an hour of transit time, and bus transit time at that, which, subjectively speaking, is much longer than normal time. Any time I go for such a meeting, I'm essentially giving up half the work day for it. Now, I'm not complaining against the meeting/associated project in the slightest. My participation there is killing multiple birds with the proverbial stone: I'm getting involved in digital projects, which is a career development goal; I'm getting experience in group projects, which is a professional expansion goal; and I'm thinking creatively in ways neither the dissertation nor blog quite hits, which was unexpected (me being jaded and such), but welcome.
I just wish it was a little closer.
At today's session, I showed up a half hour early (another peril of being dependent on bus schedules), and went to a nearby coffee shop. After the meeting, I was left with an extra bit of refuse to dispose of. There were garbage cans all over the place, but... No, I thought. No, we will recycle this discarded coffee cup. We will be part of the solution! And so, I slipped it into my bookbag's side pouch. (And sidenote: is it odd that a business-tech space doesn't have any recycling oriented capabilities? Perhaps it's evidence that business doesn't care about carbon footprints. Or a metaphor for how a focus on the virtual and electronic blinds us to the excesses and materiality of the Real. Or maybe I wasn't looking hard enough.) I didn't have much luck in the downtown area, either, and time was marching on, so I decide to hurry up and catch my bus, and worry about it on campus, where recycling locations are many and plentiful. But now I'm hurrying to make the bus, and cross the street before the light changes. Half way across, I feel, physically feel, the empty cup slide out of its pouch and hit the ground. I debated briefly, then decided that retrieving cup might be an act of good karma, but it wouldn't be an act of good sense. So I abandoned it to its fate. The real kicker is that the bus drove right past that street after I got on it, so I got to see the cup one last time, rolling forlornly back and forth. So in my desire to recycle, I went from depositing the cup in a proper garbage can to abandoning it in the street.
I am not part of the solution. I am the problem.
Last: The bus trip itself was significantly long enough for a reflection on bus etiquette. In our transit system, the bus seats are two per side of the aisle. And I have nothing but contempt for people who strain to occupy two seats (with a bag, or something) while others are standing. Yes, I understand that it's mildly uncomfortable to sit with the bag on your lap. And yes, it's always a game of personal space Russian roulette when you go on the bus. But frankly, I think that anyone who chooses (or, all right, is forced into choosing) public transit has an implicit social contract to be considerate of others while in that public space. Of course, the seat mate issue does bring with it a myriad of challenges. Such as, in my case, the complicated negotiations that must occur when the person with the window seat must get off the bus before the aisle seat person, as in my case. There's a number of visual clues you can offer, ranging from sitting up in a very expectant manner to physically standing up and plowing through, space be damned. In this particular case, I merely glanced at my fellow passenger. He glanced back, stood up, and I nodded appreciatively as I exited. A silent simpatico of social solicitude.
If Foucault really wanted to understand power relations, he should have spent more time on a bus. (This is my equivalent of all those academic papers on airline travel. Write what you know.)
Later Days.
I just wish it was a little closer.
At today's session, I showed up a half hour early (another peril of being dependent on bus schedules), and went to a nearby coffee shop. After the meeting, I was left with an extra bit of refuse to dispose of. There were garbage cans all over the place, but... No, I thought. No, we will recycle this discarded coffee cup. We will be part of the solution! And so, I slipped it into my bookbag's side pouch. (And sidenote: is it odd that a business-tech space doesn't have any recycling oriented capabilities? Perhaps it's evidence that business doesn't care about carbon footprints. Or a metaphor for how a focus on the virtual and electronic blinds us to the excesses and materiality of the Real. Or maybe I wasn't looking hard enough.) I didn't have much luck in the downtown area, either, and time was marching on, so I decide to hurry up and catch my bus, and worry about it on campus, where recycling locations are many and plentiful. But now I'm hurrying to make the bus, and cross the street before the light changes. Half way across, I feel, physically feel, the empty cup slide out of its pouch and hit the ground. I debated briefly, then decided that retrieving cup might be an act of good karma, but it wouldn't be an act of good sense. So I abandoned it to its fate. The real kicker is that the bus drove right past that street after I got on it, so I got to see the cup one last time, rolling forlornly back and forth. So in my desire to recycle, I went from depositing the cup in a proper garbage can to abandoning it in the street.
I am not part of the solution. I am the problem.
Last: The bus trip itself was significantly long enough for a reflection on bus etiquette. In our transit system, the bus seats are two per side of the aisle. And I have nothing but contempt for people who strain to occupy two seats (with a bag, or something) while others are standing. Yes, I understand that it's mildly uncomfortable to sit with the bag on your lap. And yes, it's always a game of personal space Russian roulette when you go on the bus. But frankly, I think that anyone who chooses (or, all right, is forced into choosing) public transit has an implicit social contract to be considerate of others while in that public space. Of course, the seat mate issue does bring with it a myriad of challenges. Such as, in my case, the complicated negotiations that must occur when the person with the window seat must get off the bus before the aisle seat person, as in my case. There's a number of visual clues you can offer, ranging from sitting up in a very expectant manner to physically standing up and plowing through, space be damned. In this particular case, I merely glanced at my fellow passenger. He glanced back, stood up, and I nodded appreciatively as I exited. A silent simpatico of social solicitude.
If Foucault really wanted to understand power relations, he should have spent more time on a bus. (This is my equivalent of all those academic papers on airline travel. Write what you know.)
Later Days.
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
He's Such a Groovy Guy
Here's the table of contents page from the Earthworm Jim 2 manual:
I mention it because, in that single page, it shows more personality and humor than most game manuals (or most games) show in their entirety. And, finally, I know the contents of table.
Later Days.
I mention it because, in that single page, it shows more personality and humor than most game manuals (or most games) show in their entirety. And, finally, I know the contents of table.
Later Days.
Sunday, February 5, 2012
Bibliophile: foot-to-ball, and other balls.
butterfly in the sky, I can go twice as high
take a look, it's in a book, it's Bibliophile!
That's either my best opening, or my absolute worst. At any rate, let's get started.
It's a mixed bag today--there's 5000 new entries in the library system, but it seems most are streamed videos my department doesn't have access to. Boo, hiss.
So, skipping across 4000 some items, we have this:
Architecture for a free subjectivity : Deleuze and Guattari at the horizon of the real / Simone Brott. Farnham, Surrey ; Burlington, VT : Ashgate, c2011.
It seems like it's been a long time since there's been a Deleuze and Guattari sighting. I've missed their assemblages, their rhizomes, their bodies without organs. As the title suggests, it concerns their views on subjectivity, and applies it to architecture, to how architecture creates its own subjectivity.
Future minds : how the digital age is changing our minds, why this matters, and what we can do about it / Richard Watson. London ; Boston : Nicholas Brealey Pub., 2010.
Watson argues that our digital technology has taken its toll on our creativity. And not in an abstract way--the physiological effect of digital media use, he claims, affects child brain development. He recommends a deliberate decrease in the use of digital tech. It's very much in the vein of Turkle's "Alone Together"--it may have a good point, but it's very tempting to dismiss it as digital alarmist hysteria. I guess the problem with most solutions to the "electronic problem" is that they all seem like a step back; people generally don't like giving up their gadgets unless they've got something even newer to replace them with.
Find a job through social networking : use LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and more to advance your career / Diane Crompton And Ellen Sautter. 2nd ed. Indianapolis, IN : JIST Works, c2011.
It kind of annoys me that this book exists. The others aren't so bad, but using Twitter (and to a lesser extent, Facebook) to advance one's career just seems so.... sigh. I guess I'm just a fuddy duddy luddite.
Testicles : balls in cooking and culture / Blandine Vié ; translated from the French by Giles MacDonogh. Devon : Prospect Books, 2011.
It's a balance between recipes I'd never eat, and investigations into some of the cultural implications of testicles throughout the century. It's an investigation of virility and deliciousness. Or I assume.
Knowledge economy and the city : spaces of knowledge / Ali Madanipour. London ; New York : Routledge, 2011.
The book's argument seems to be that just as the shift towards large scale economy created the new spaces of the twentieth century (city and such), the knowledge economy stands poised to create some new spaces of its own. I think, if anything, that this may be a book that's coming a little late; the digital knowledge-based shifts he's referring to started a while ago. After all, Tiziana Terranova's been publishing on the subject of the digital economy for over a decade now. Perhaps he's saying that we can now better judge its effect on space. That's fair: our mobile tech in particular is adjusting the way we see the world around us.
Global football league : transnational networks, social movements and sport in the new media age / Peter Millward. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire ; New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
I've got a fondness for football/soccer. I've always believed, in my heart of hearts, that it's the one popular sport that I might not, had things been different, been absolutely terrible at. Alas, the only options for a young male in my particular corner of rural Saskatchewan were hockey, baseball, and, later, basketball. The basketball net and I don't see eye to eye--literally, which is the biggest part of the problem. And I can't throw a baseball properly (I don't throw like a girl; I throw like someone without arms). And on skates, I stop by crashing into things. What were we talking about? Oh yeah, the book's about how the globalization of soccer affects the local British fan's understanding of the game. That's cool.
Deleuze and world politics : alter-globalizations and nomad science / Peter Lenco. London ; New York : Routledge, 2011.
Double Deleuze! This book is specifically on applying Deleuze's notions of power to the anti-globalization movement. The focus of the movement on economic injustice and the rich exerting undue influence and unaccounted for effects on the underdeveloped countries is admittedly a topic that lends itself to Deleuze's brand of analysis. Now available on Amazon for a mere $114! Yeah, that's a book that you get from the library.
Faculty incivility : the rise of the academic bully culture and what to do about it / Darla J. Twale, Barbara M. De Luca.
It's about time someone put that officemate of mine in his place. He's always eating in the office, leaving boxes on the floor, staying there at all hours. Oh wait, that's me. Seriously, I can see how this can be a problem. As scholars, we're supposed to be above such issues as petty incivility. In reality, we're just people, and more than most to be riddled with the insecurities that may lead to bullying behavior. I can't quite get over the sense that a book on the subject is a little ridiculous, which might suggest how ingrained the issue is. (Or it might mean that the book is a little ridiculous.) Either way, I think it's time you gave me your lunch money.
Language and learning in the digital age / James Paul Gee and Elisabeth R. Hayes. London ; New York : Routledge, 2011.
I don't think I've ever actually read a book by James Paul Gee. He's one of the go-to guys when it comes to videogames and education, but... well, it's a subject I don't have much interest in, to be honest. I'm really more interested in what videogames are doing now than what they may or may not do in the future. I realize it's a rather short-sighted view; perhaps this book is the one to cure me of that.
Bound by love : familial bonding in film and television since 1950 / edited by Laura Mattoon D'Amore. Newcastle : Cambridge Scholars, 2011.
I do love those pop culture anthologies. And this subject is more relevant than most. For decades, the TV/movie family has served as a barometer of what the American family "should" be: from "Father knows best" to the problem easily solvable in 22 minutes, with a voice-over drawing everything together so we know exactly how to feel about it (I'm looking at you, Modern Family). This book includes masculinity and missing mothers in Everwood, Supernatural and "I'll take our family over normal", and love and marriage in cold war educational films (which are awesome).
Graphic subjects : critical essays on autobiography and graphic novels / edited by Michael A. Chaney. Madison : The University of Wisconsin Press, c2011.
Another pop-culture anthology, albeit one with a very different focus. This topic is fairly popular; I actually know a few people who specialize in autobiographic graphic novels. Books here include Art Spiegelman’s Maus, David Beauchard’s Epileptic, Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, Alan Moore’s Watchmen, and Gene Yang’s American Born Chinese. I've read all of these, except Beauchard's Epileptic. I'd like to see the argument for autobiography in Moore's Watchmen. My snarky side is fairly sure that Moore has never been a customed super hero, but I'm sure there's more than that.
Sleep hotel / Amy Newlove Schroeder. Oberlin, Ohio : Oberlin College Press, c2010.
Given my literature origins, I try to include a fiction piece in each entry. The problem is, fiction titles are usually catchy, but aren't very descriptive of the book's content, at least, not in the way a scholarly book is. So it means diving in blind, in most cases. And in this case: the book I picked is actually a book of poems. So I've dived in blind, and I'm now completely at sea. It seems well-reviewed, which is in its favor, and it contains the line "I love you the way the ground loves the flame." The overall "theme" of the book, as suggested the title, is that these poems are like dreams. That's... workable? I really don't know how to deal with 21st century poetry.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
This is not the end of the book / Jean-Claude Carrière & Umberto Eco ; a conversation curated by Jean-Phillippe de Tonnac ; translated from the French by Polly McLean. London : Harvill Secker, 2011.
Umberto Eco is another one of those theorists that I feel I should have read more of, but it never really happened. According to the National Post review, Eco quickly makes his main point: books are here to stay, internet or not. Either they'll stay in their current form, or they'll be recreated digitally in some form that preserves their basic essence. I'd say that's open for debate, but according to the reviewer, the real meat of the book is the people discussing their book collections--40 000 owned by Carriere, and 50 000 by Eco. Sheesh. The review, in case you're interested, is here. I admit, the idea of people who love books and really know what they're talking about sounds like a winner to me. (Although, while I'm confessing, I was a little surprised to find that Umberto Eco was still alive. I'm used to my non-digital theorist people being post-mortem. He looks pretty healthy for 80 years old, so good for him.)
Books are good. That seems like an appropriate note to end an edition of Bibliophile.
Later Days.
take a look, it's in a book, it's Bibliophile!
That's either my best opening, or my absolute worst. At any rate, let's get started.
It's a mixed bag today--there's 5000 new entries in the library system, but it seems most are streamed videos my department doesn't have access to. Boo, hiss.
So, skipping across 4000 some items, we have this:
Architecture for a free subjectivity : Deleuze and Guattari at the horizon of the real / Simone Brott. Farnham, Surrey ; Burlington, VT : Ashgate, c2011.
It seems like it's been a long time since there's been a Deleuze and Guattari sighting. I've missed their assemblages, their rhizomes, their bodies without organs. As the title suggests, it concerns their views on subjectivity, and applies it to architecture, to how architecture creates its own subjectivity.
Future minds : how the digital age is changing our minds, why this matters, and what we can do about it / Richard Watson. London ; Boston : Nicholas Brealey Pub., 2010.
Watson argues that our digital technology has taken its toll on our creativity. And not in an abstract way--the physiological effect of digital media use, he claims, affects child brain development. He recommends a deliberate decrease in the use of digital tech. It's very much in the vein of Turkle's "Alone Together"--it may have a good point, but it's very tempting to dismiss it as digital alarmist hysteria. I guess the problem with most solutions to the "electronic problem" is that they all seem like a step back; people generally don't like giving up their gadgets unless they've got something even newer to replace them with.
Find a job through social networking : use LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and more to advance your career / Diane Crompton And Ellen Sautter. 2nd ed. Indianapolis, IN : JIST Works, c2011.
It kind of annoys me that this book exists. The others aren't so bad, but using Twitter (and to a lesser extent, Facebook) to advance one's career just seems so.... sigh. I guess I'm just a fuddy duddy luddite.
Testicles : balls in cooking and culture / Blandine Vié ; translated from the French by Giles MacDonogh. Devon : Prospect Books, 2011.
It's a balance between recipes I'd never eat, and investigations into some of the cultural implications of testicles throughout the century. It's an investigation of virility and deliciousness. Or I assume.
Knowledge economy and the city : spaces of knowledge / Ali Madanipour. London ; New York : Routledge, 2011.
The book's argument seems to be that just as the shift towards large scale economy created the new spaces of the twentieth century (city and such), the knowledge economy stands poised to create some new spaces of its own. I think, if anything, that this may be a book that's coming a little late; the digital knowledge-based shifts he's referring to started a while ago. After all, Tiziana Terranova's been publishing on the subject of the digital economy for over a decade now. Perhaps he's saying that we can now better judge its effect on space. That's fair: our mobile tech in particular is adjusting the way we see the world around us.
Global football league : transnational networks, social movements and sport in the new media age / Peter Millward. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire ; New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
I've got a fondness for football/soccer. I've always believed, in my heart of hearts, that it's the one popular sport that I might not, had things been different, been absolutely terrible at. Alas, the only options for a young male in my particular corner of rural Saskatchewan were hockey, baseball, and, later, basketball. The basketball net and I don't see eye to eye--literally, which is the biggest part of the problem. And I can't throw a baseball properly (I don't throw like a girl; I throw like someone without arms). And on skates, I stop by crashing into things. What were we talking about? Oh yeah, the book's about how the globalization of soccer affects the local British fan's understanding of the game. That's cool.
Deleuze and world politics : alter-globalizations and nomad science / Peter Lenco. London ; New York : Routledge, 2011.
Double Deleuze! This book is specifically on applying Deleuze's notions of power to the anti-globalization movement. The focus of the movement on economic injustice and the rich exerting undue influence and unaccounted for effects on the underdeveloped countries is admittedly a topic that lends itself to Deleuze's brand of analysis. Now available on Amazon for a mere $114! Yeah, that's a book that you get from the library.
Faculty incivility : the rise of the academic bully culture and what to do about it / Darla J. Twale, Barbara M. De Luca.
It's about time someone put that officemate of mine in his place. He's always eating in the office, leaving boxes on the floor, staying there at all hours. Oh wait, that's me. Seriously, I can see how this can be a problem. As scholars, we're supposed to be above such issues as petty incivility. In reality, we're just people, and more than most to be riddled with the insecurities that may lead to bullying behavior. I can't quite get over the sense that a book on the subject is a little ridiculous, which might suggest how ingrained the issue is. (Or it might mean that the book is a little ridiculous.) Either way, I think it's time you gave me your lunch money.
Language and learning in the digital age / James Paul Gee and Elisabeth R. Hayes. London ; New York : Routledge, 2011.
I don't think I've ever actually read a book by James Paul Gee. He's one of the go-to guys when it comes to videogames and education, but... well, it's a subject I don't have much interest in, to be honest. I'm really more interested in what videogames are doing now than what they may or may not do in the future. I realize it's a rather short-sighted view; perhaps this book is the one to cure me of that.
Bound by love : familial bonding in film and television since 1950 / edited by Laura Mattoon D'Amore. Newcastle : Cambridge Scholars, 2011.
I do love those pop culture anthologies. And this subject is more relevant than most. For decades, the TV/movie family has served as a barometer of what the American family "should" be: from "Father knows best" to the problem easily solvable in 22 minutes, with a voice-over drawing everything together so we know exactly how to feel about it (I'm looking at you, Modern Family). This book includes masculinity and missing mothers in Everwood, Supernatural and "I'll take our family over normal", and love and marriage in cold war educational films (which are awesome).
Graphic subjects : critical essays on autobiography and graphic novels / edited by Michael A. Chaney. Madison : The University of Wisconsin Press, c2011.
Another pop-culture anthology, albeit one with a very different focus. This topic is fairly popular; I actually know a few people who specialize in autobiographic graphic novels. Books here include Art Spiegelman’s Maus, David Beauchard’s Epileptic, Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, Alan Moore’s Watchmen, and Gene Yang’s American Born Chinese. I've read all of these, except Beauchard's Epileptic. I'd like to see the argument for autobiography in Moore's Watchmen. My snarky side is fairly sure that Moore has never been a customed super hero, but I'm sure there's more than that.
Sleep hotel / Amy Newlove Schroeder. Oberlin, Ohio : Oberlin College Press, c2010.
Given my literature origins, I try to include a fiction piece in each entry. The problem is, fiction titles are usually catchy, but aren't very descriptive of the book's content, at least, not in the way a scholarly book is. So it means diving in blind, in most cases. And in this case: the book I picked is actually a book of poems. So I've dived in blind, and I'm now completely at sea. It seems well-reviewed, which is in its favor, and it contains the line "I love you the way the ground loves the flame." The overall "theme" of the book, as suggested the title, is that these poems are like dreams. That's... workable? I really don't know how to deal with 21st century poetry.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
This is not the end of the book / Jean-Claude Carrière & Umberto Eco ; a conversation curated by Jean-Phillippe de Tonnac ; translated from the French by Polly McLean. London : Harvill Secker, 2011.
Umberto Eco is another one of those theorists that I feel I should have read more of, but it never really happened. According to the National Post review, Eco quickly makes his main point: books are here to stay, internet or not. Either they'll stay in their current form, or they'll be recreated digitally in some form that preserves their basic essence. I'd say that's open for debate, but according to the reviewer, the real meat of the book is the people discussing their book collections--40 000 owned by Carriere, and 50 000 by Eco. Sheesh. The review, in case you're interested, is here. I admit, the idea of people who love books and really know what they're talking about sounds like a winner to me. (Although, while I'm confessing, I was a little surprised to find that Umberto Eco was still alive. I'm used to my non-digital theorist people being post-mortem. He looks pretty healthy for 80 years old, so good for him.)
Books are good. That seems like an appropriate note to end an edition of Bibliophile.
Later Days.
And when you flip the light switch, a toilet flushes.
A few hours ago, I started coughing. As a man allergic to just about everything, this is not an unusual event in and of itself. This cough, though, was rather persistent. After a few minutes of hacking, I decided to take steps. This measure was not so much for myself, understand. When it comes to my personal health, I generally fall somewhere between stoic and almost suicidally stubborn. If my body wants to spend a few hours hacking, fine. I'm not going to let it change my course of affairs one jot; it's not the boss of me! In this particular instance, though, I had other considerations to think about. It had just turned midnight, and I had roommates trying to sleep. As a matter of etiquette, then, something had to be done. I put on a heavier shirt. Still coughing. No worries; that was just a preliminary sally forth anyway. I blow my nose. Still coughing. I take a double puff on the inhaler. Still coughing. Then I pull out my hail mary--it's directly against my pointless stoic beliefs, but I swallowed my pride and my medicine, and helped myself to my sole bottle of brand name cough syrup. Alas, it was all for naught, for the cough persisted.
Then I got an idea. And this wasn't a long shot type of idea. No, this was the sort of idea where it comes to you, and you simultaneously think "that'll do it" and "I should have thought of this from the start." I go into my bag of winter gear, got out a toque, and put it on. The coughing stopped almost instantly.
I was coughing because my ears were cold.
This body, man. The stories I could tell you. Still, it gets me to work in the morning.
Later Days.
Then I got an idea. And this wasn't a long shot type of idea. No, this was the sort of idea where it comes to you, and you simultaneously think "that'll do it" and "I should have thought of this from the start." I go into my bag of winter gear, got out a toque, and put it on. The coughing stopped almost instantly.
I was coughing because my ears were cold.
This body, man. The stories I could tell you. Still, it gets me to work in the morning.
Later Days.
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