What is peer-review?

Image via WikipediaI present an article that talks about that very topic. I've spent the last couple of years teaching information literacy and one of the big topics I cover with the classes I am invited it to speak to, is about peer review. Why is that? Because students by-in-large do not know what it is and I've found that instructors expect them to know what it is or explain it in a way that still leaves them a little confused about it.

So read up! Does it cover everything you wanted/need to know about peer review?

Meet Science: What is "peer-review"?

The End and the Beginning

Image via WikipediaCutting out the overly dramatic nonsense, I just wanted to get down my thoughts/feelings on the moving on from my first library job at Berkeley College.

My time there was great and I am very appreciative for the opportunity they gave me to come in, basically, straight out of library school. They gave me the latitude to grow and explore the profession all the while teaching me the ins and outs of day-to-day operation of a small library. The fact that it was a small library let me get a broad range look at a lot of areas of librarianship that may get lost in bigger institutions. When serving on search committees at Berkeley, that is an area that I tell interviewees is a big plus, at least for me it was.

The people there were great as well. They even threw a surprise going away lunch for me my last week which warmed my heart (and filled my belly). My boss, Jim, is a cool cat and he gave me the latitude to be me so to speak and share in the responsibilities of making that library work day in and day out.

So, goodbye Berkeley College. My time with you was invaluable time well spent. Best of luck and I will keep in touch.

LL

Ed's Mini Book Review - Nightlife by Rob Thurman

Cover of Nightlife (Cal Leandros, Book 1)Another recommendation review, and this one gave me the book to read too. Nightlife is the first book featuring Cal Leandros who is half human and half something else. Fitting quite easily into the ever growing pantheon of Dark Fantasy (Urban Fantasy or whatever you want to call it), Nightlife has all the trimmings of a classic entry into the genre. You've got your emo main character in Cal, short for Caliban, along with his kick-ass half brother Niko as well as a menagerie supporting cast ranging from a teen psychic (and possible love interest for Cal) to the comedic relief character of Longfellow.

So, what's not to like from this book? Well, actually, quite a bit. Reading this book made me appreciate and look more at, pacing in books. The pacing in this book was terrible. There seemed to be no movement in the big mystery of what was going on. We ended up with a lot of faux-witty banter between Cal and Niko and while that did show, in-depth, the level of their love for one another as brothers, it got very tedious. I felt like the book was trying too hard to be witty and funny instead of the humor and camaraderie naturally flow from the characters.

Those two major flaws had me struggling to finish the book and finding out the plan of the big bad is what kept me going to the end. I will probably, at some point, read the follow-up book because that was given to me as well but will be in no rush to read it.

My Grade: C-

LL

Updates and Reading Lists.

Image via WikipediaAs you can gather from my last post and some of my tweets, I will be leaving my post (haha, pun intended) at the small college library that gave me my start in the world of librarianship, to take a tenure-track job at the university where I earned my library degree. With no doubt I am excited about the new position and a little nervous, wanting to do well and prove that I belong and all that stuff.

I am also very appreciative to the college library that gave me that start and was so very helpful and nurturing in giving me the opportunity to develop my skills and allowing me the freedom to experiment and try new and exciting things. So off I go but not for another month or so, and going from one place to another will not mean that the blog will end (in case anyone was wondering).

I've also been keeping busy with the reading but I am behind on the reviews. I have started reviews on the second Sandman Slim book and the fourth Felix Castor book. In the hopper for me to finish reading:

A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin

Nightlife by Rob Thurman

Naming of the Beasts by Mike Carey

The Information by James Gleick

The King of Plagues by Jonathan Maberry

Ed's Mini Book Review - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by P.K. Dick

Image via WikipediaI remember seeing Blade Runner as a kid and being totally blown away by the visuals. The draw was quite simple, and I think it was the draw the studio was going after as well, Harrison Ford in a sci-fi movie, obviously shades of Star Wars. As a kid, I don't think I 'got' the movie. I liked the way it looked but felt it was a little dull. I wanted to see Han Solo kicking some tail and shooting up replicants but I didn't get the subtlety and subtext of the film though it did resonate with me on a level I wasn't sure what that level was. Deckerd was cool and little did I know that this was my first real look into that noirish hero archetype that I really dig now that I am all grown up (on some level).

After seeing it again years later, I started to get some of the things that were going on and missed as a kid and I started getting into the writings of P.K. Dick, first with the short stories and eventually making my way to Blade Runner or Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep as the novel is called.

A funny thing happened when I started reading the novel, I didn't like it. I stopped a few chapters in and there it sat in the back of my bookshelf for almost ten years. I guess I was looking for it to be more like the film and as I should have guessed seeing some of the adaptations of his short stories turned to movies, Hollywood changes a lot around (I am looking at you Minority Report). In this case though I thought the changes were for the better in the film. It was tight, had focus and Deckerd had that noir vibe that he didn't have in the book.

So, spent on zombie books, I looked around there was Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep staring back at me so I gave it another shot. Deckerd still had that everyman thing going on and not the cool cat thing Harrison Ford had but there was something in that everyman-ish quality that I was finding intriguing that I hadn't felt with him before. He wasn't the seasoned, polished Blade Runner that Ford had going in the movie, he was just a guy finding his way, waiting for the big break in his career that this situation, hunting down the replicants in place of the injured senior Blade Runner, could provide him. This Deckerd is concerned with mundane things like getting a new pet, hopefully a real one and not a android pet, that makes him relateable on that on that everyman-ish level.

Now, as I said before, the book is different from the film though the main premise is the same, Deckerd the bounty hunter, tracking down escaped replicants. How it goes down is very different but many of the themes stay intact though I will admit that I was a little bit disappointed that the famous Roy Baty speech that Rutger Hauer gives in the film wasn't in the book. To me, that speech made the film because it showed the human-ness of the replicants that is missing from the book.

Conflicted as I am and not doing a very good job of separating the film from the book, I do recommend the book but if you've seen the film, I am not sure there is anything you'd get from the book that you wouldn't get from the film.

My Grade: B+

LL

Ed's Mini Book Review - Kill the Dead by Robert Kadrey

Image by Rrrrred via FlickrKill the Dead is the second Sandman Slim book by Robert Kadrey which piqued my curiosity in the series after seeing it on a number of Top 10 lists for Urban Fantasy in 2010. I decided to read the first Sandman Slim book, cleverly titled Sandman Slim, though the review for Kill the Dead that I read said I didn't really need to read the first book and it seems like they were lying a bit.

Kill the Dead picks up shortly after the end of Sandman Slim and if you didn't read the first book, there would a lot that you would not get right away or just go right over your head. Kadrey does a good job of getting you up to speed but I think there would be a little lost if you hadn't read Sandman Slim. Kadrey also doesn't waste any time getting back into things with an action piece right off the top and let's face it, that's why you would read something like this anyway, for some hard nosed action. I also like that Kadrey has no problems going for the brass ring and bringing in the heavy hitters. What does that mean? Read the book and find out.

I've read too many books that are looking to drag things out for the sequel or to continue the series that it sometimes feels that things aren't progressing or going anywhere anytime soon. Not this series (of two so far). Kadrey keeps the action moving and, in a departure from the first, the development of Stark (Sandman Slim) beyond the sociopath bent on revenge to....something else. He was fairly one dimensional in the first book but here, in amongst the action pieces, we get some growth with Stark that added a change a pace as the one tune Stark gets stale after a while.

I highly recommend the Sandman Slim books if you're into that sort of thing, fast paced action of the urban fantasy variety. I can't wait for book three!

My Grade: A

LL

Ed's Mini Book Review - Sandman Slim by Richard Kadrey

Image by Chorazin via FlickrA few weeks ago, I catch this list of the top Urban Fantasy Books of 2010 on Geeks of Doom, and numero uno on the list is the second Sandman Slim book, Kill the Dead. So, if I'm going to check out the what they say is the number one book, then I should read book one of the series.

My impression was that Sandman Slim it a bit of a rip-off. He's Harry Dresden meets Joe Pitt. He's the guy who can wield some pretty bad mojo but unlike Dresden, he doesn't care who is in the way or who he has to go through to get what he needs. Before I go any further, here's the set-up. Stark (Sandman Slim) used to run with some bad boys who could all toss around some magic. Stark has potential but he's too busy playing the bad boy type, pissing everybody off, including some in his circle of magic users. So one day, they turn on him and banish him to hell where he spends the next eleven years enduring all types of torture and developing the rep of a demon killer from fighting in the arena and surviving, thus earning the nickname, Sandman Slim.

After escaping from the heat locker downstairs, Stark goes all out to get those that sent him there with, as I mentioned above, little regard for who or what gets in his way. Now, I've had some message board discussions with others that read Sandman Slim and Stark's one tone act turned them off. There was really no growth or change to the character and he spent basically all of the book being a bad ass with the fight first as ask questions later mentality. And those people were right about Stark....but damn if it wasn't a fun ride along with him.

For me, this was a fun little book. At times I thought, this is what Harry Dresden could do if he ever went off the deep end. Action galore, snappy dialog, and too-cool characters pepper Sandman Slim like Manny used to on the Green Monster. If action fiction with a little bit of supernatural is your thing, I recommend Sandman Slim. Plus, it gets you closer to Kill the Dead, which you don't need the this book necessarily to read, but it helps out.

My Grade: B+

LL