My Dead Body

Charlie Huston's new book, My Dead Body, the last of the Joe Pitt casebooks is out now!

If you haven't read any of Charlie Huston's work, go do so forthwith. If you haven't read any of the Joe Pitt casebooks, then do so forth-soon. Stephen King raves about Huston's work and I do too, though people may take Stephen King's word for it more than mine.

Paranormal Activity

Anyone heard of it? No, silly, I mean the movie. If you haven't, it's this little indy flick that's trying to get noticed by hitting up the interwebs in various forms like social networking sites and such. This is the new word of mouth for the so-called information age so get used to it.

Check out Paranormal Activity here.

Book/Movie Reviews

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One of the things that I planned for the blog is the occasional book/movie review. Now, I've been busy the last two weeks with this inter-filing/shifting thing so not only haven't I written any new posts, but I also haven't gone to the movies either. Now as many of you know, September is one of the black hole months for movie releases, the other is January. I say this because those are the two months, right after big movie seasons, the summer and holiday seasons, where movie studios dump their garbage flicks. The end result is there aren't too many movies worth seeing during those months. Once the good movies start being released again, be sure that I will post some movie reviews.

The other type of review that I'll post are book reviews. I'll start off with The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown that was just released this past Tuesday. For those that don't know, this is the third book featuring the character of Dr. Robert Langdon of Angels & Demons and The Da Vinci Code fame. Yeah I know it's pulp literature, food for the masses, blahblahblah and all that jazz but I enjoyed the first two books for what they were so we'll see where this takes us.

A little word though on how I read books. I tend to read rather slowly and being a huge film fan, I play scenes out in my mind, as I am reading, cinematically (if that is a real word) full of cheesy pauses in dialogue and the like. So truth be told, who knows when I'll get the book done. Plus I read like four books at a time and pick what book to read depending on my mood. Right now I have, along with The Lost Symbol, Blink by Malcolm Gladwell and Thunder & Ashes by R.A. Zecht on my plate though I think I'll finish off Blink then focus on The Lost Symbol since I've teased the review enough.

Oh, and maybe a movie review in the meantime.

Academic Library Job Hunting

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Been ruminating on this topic for a while as I am on the search committee for new librarian hires. Interesting thing here is that I actually like being on the committee and that is not a suck up line in case my superiors find this blog sometime in the near future. Originally I was picked to be on the committee then I volunteered and now, I think, it's just assumed that I would volunteer. No matter to me, like I said before, I dig it.

Now, first things first, I work in an academic library so our interviews have an instructional component to them. So let's go over some do's and don'ts shall we?

1. This really goes for any job interview but, be on time. You'd be surprised at how many people, all with at least one Masters degree too, show up late. Late getting to the interview is a quick way to make sure you don't get the job. If there are extenuating circumstances like a car accident or something, at least call.

2. Another general one but, be prepared. Don't show up and wing it. Do some research about the institution and the position you are applying for and if your answers seem canned, so be it, it at least shows preparation (and not H).

3. Make eye contact, especially when doing a demo lesson. We had this one applicant who knew his stuff but he never looked at anyone. It was rather distracting as it was as if he was making a point not to make eye contact. The end result was that his presentation was not engaging and it would be easy to see how college students would take away little from his presentation.

4. Know what it expected of you. If you are asked to do a demo, ask if they want it on a particular topic or in a particular format. If you are interviewing at a place that uses a certain piece of software or technology, ask them if they do so you can prepare something that is right up their ally. For instance, if school likes to use PowerPoint, then prepare something in PowerPoint. The only way you will find out is to ask. Don't put yourself in a position where you seem a bit underwhelming on your demo because you use something that they don't use or fins outdated.

5. Last one as I will limit this to only five, be engaging. I suppose this can go for any interview but especially one in which you deal with people on a regular basis and one where you have a teaching component to it. Show your personality, win us over, smile and be yourself. I've seen way to many people who come in and are like robots, too afraid to do something or say something that would knock them out of contention for the job and come off like stiffs. Remember, if you are interviewing for a reference job (and I'll get to this later) then you are essentially interviewing for a customer service job. Show that you can be that customer service guru and sell us on you as you would sell a student on a particular source.

Now, disclaimer time. This really applies for people looking for a reference/instruction position. For instance, if you are a cataloger and interview for that type of academic job then you can skip the last three.

Well that's just my 2 cents on the matter but what do I know, I'm just a rookie librarian.

Summer Readings

I didn't do as much reading over the Summer as I would have liked but here is a list of what I did read.

Devil May Care by Sebastian Faulks (writing as Ian Fleming)
Patient Zero by Jonathan Mayberry
Six Bad Things by Charlie Huston
The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death by Charlie Huston
High Fidelity by Nick Hornby

A few graphic novels/trades
Transmetropolitan vol. 4
Scapled vol. 1 & 2
Criminal vol. 4
Fables vol. 5

more if I can remember them....


Just started
Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
Thunder & Ashes by Z.A. Recht

Time's 50 Best Websites 2009

Image by Tony the Misfit via Flickr

For your perusal pleasure.

Time's 50 Best Websites 2009

Why do we Blog?

Why do people blog? Is it because we all think we have something important to say? Is it because many of us fancy ourselves as writers? Is it just something to do, to toil away the hours in our mundane lives?

Maybe it's therapeutic in some sort of way. It's an outlet for what bothers us in life. Ever see those blogs where all the writer does is complain about this and that, their life, some other persons life, government, society and blah blah blah? Yeah, I hate those too but that's not the point of this blog here (or I'd be just like those cats).

The point is to throw out there the question at hand, why do it. A fellow librarian here started a blog and that's what got me thinking about it. Why did he do it? Maybe it was to trump up professional cred as it is a library themed blog talking about new search tools and the like. Maybe he was bored and started it on a whim.

Me? I guess I started this thing for all of the reasons above. I think I have something to say, even if it is silly and juvenile, which is most of what I say. I fancied myself as a writer back in the day as my English degree will attest. Sometimes I need to vent, and being in a library is not the primo place to vent on anything, but this blog won't be about venting (or ventis though there may be something down the line about the greatness that is the Venti Ice Frapp on a hot and humid day). I tend to write when I am bored so that may be a bit of a reason and I am doing this on a bit of a whim. Ok, that isn't exactly true, I started thinking about starting a blog after seeing Jule & Julia (I know my man cred just took a hit there but whatev) a couple of weeks ago and I started thinking about it more and more the last day or so. Hey, that movie made it look like so much fun and easy so mashing up all the reasons to do it, I decided to take the plunge (and Amy Adams was just too cute in that movie).

So those are my reasons. I'm sure I'll be duly motivated to keep up with this and will probably talk about all sorts of things like issues in librarianship and stuff that comes up while I am doing the librarian thing but also things that interest me like movies (I go to the movies way too often), funny stuff or at least stuff I think are funny and, oh yeah, BOOKS.

So, why do you blog? If you don't, then why don't you? It's easy to set up and we all have something to say and I'm sure it's more than just 140 characters long.