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.
No comments:
Post a Comment