Seen any good movie adaptations lately?

My Netflix queue has been dominated by the Road to Avonlea series for the past four months (only two seasons left to go!), so I haven't seen too many movies lately. However, one new release I did break from Avonlea for was Ramona and Beezus.

As a kid, I loooooved the Ramona books by Beverly Cleary. I haven't read them in years, but I'm pretty sure I still would love them. When I was a kid, I loved Ramona for her spunk, her imagination, and for the shenanigans she seemed to always get herself into. I loved them for how Beverly Cleary could write so well about the awesome simplicity of being a kid—no drama for the sake of drama, just practical jokes, climbing trees, and frustration with school. In fact, I wasn't particular to the Ramona books; I loved all the Beverly Cleary books. Henry Huggins, Muggy Maggie—what a gift of alliteration!

Though I know now that Beverly Cleary wrote most of her books from the fifties through seventies, the stories are so timeless because I always pictured them in the present-tense (which was the early- to mid-90s when I was reading them). The characters, the setting, the situations are relative to kids of any decade, which is why I was happy to see Ramona and Beezus (though the appropriate order is still "Beezus and Ramona" in my head) make it to the big screen in, what I found to be, a successful fashion. [Sidenote: I vaguely remember a Ramona TV series from the 80s, and lo and behold, there was one, starring...Sarah Polley, star of Avonlea! Oh the coincidences in this post!]

Anyway, the 2010 Ramona and Beezus has a plethora of well-known actors, all of whom I completely ADORE, and was very enjoyable for this kid at heart. I recommend, for you and your kids!

In which I come back on bended knee.

I have been a very bad reader/blogger lately. Ok, not so much a bad reader, but definitely a bad blogger. I have the March funk. Yes, a serious funk. While many people nationwide feel this revitalization of life with Spring in the air, one does not feel that in New York. At least, not this girl. Why? Because the forecast for tomorrow is 38 with snow. SNOW!

BUT, hopefully Spring is somewhere close in the neighborhood, and warm weather outdoor reading is just around the corner.

Lately, I've read:

Summer at Tiffany by Marjorie Hart — Wow, how I would kill to experience NYC in previous decades. Marjorie's memoir of a 1940s summer spent working at Tiffany and Co. is wonderfully nostalgic. It's sweet and simple and full of slang like "gee whiz" and "golly." Hart describes a New York I certainly have never seen—one with daily lunches at the Automat and hats covering everyone's heads! I'm sure I glamorize this era of NYC history just as many people (or, ahem, TV shows) glamorize the NYC of today, but I don't care. It's a great escape, and that's what reading is for, right?

Side note: To any of you visiting for BEA week and interested in NYC history, check out the NYC Transit Museum. Admission is cheap, and you can see all the old subway cars from decades ago. So fun!

The Summer Book by Tove Jansson — I thought I'd love this book because a) it's NYRB, b) it was recommended by Idlewild, c) it's about SUMMER. But it was only "meh." The book is pretty much a series of short vignettes about a grandmother and 6-year-old granddaughter spending the summer on a remote island off the coast of Finland. It's supposed to be the contrast of a girl starting her life, while another one is ending hers, as told in simple pieces. But mostly, I was just kinda bored. The characters had an interesting dynamic but I didn't really like either of them, nor see their merit. I did like the grandmother's methods of imparting wisdom to Sophia—a very "learn through lessons" kind of way—but I thought Sophia was just a brat. Maybe I should reread this sometime when I'm in a better mood.

This Book is Overdue! How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All by Marilyn Johnson — The author is basically out to prove one thing: that librarians are absolutely necessary, especially with new technologies, though the means by which they perform their services are always changing and expanding. Johnson uses a variety of case studies to make her point, most of which were very interesting. This is one of those books I need to own so I can mark the pages that interested me, mostly because now I want to search out all the librarian blogs and archive websites she listed. My only gripe was an overly long chapter on Second Life which seemed less relevant (she could've just said "Real life librarians become librarians in Second Life" to make her point rather than write pages on specific Second Lifers). The book was definitely interesting, but I think only those interested in Librarianism will enjoy.


I swear I'll get back to real reading and posting soon....

New on my New York list

This day finally had to come. A web ad got me. I clicked-through. I saw an ad for a book on the Time Out New York site with the tag line "...and other observations from a Southern Belle turned Brooklyn Hipster," and I thought, "Hey, this is my life," minus the stereotypical extremes of 'Belle' and 'Hipster' (neither of which I can completely call myself). But hey, the locations are the same. Therefore, I Totally Meant to Do That is on the list.

So Jane Borden, your Random House marketing team got me.

And because I am now a grad school student and officially on my way to becoming Super Librarian, I am intrigued by Algonquin's new When Tito Loved Clara, partly because it takes place in New York but MOSTLY because author Jon Michaud is the head librarian at The New Yorker and is a M.L.S. degree holder, as well. I mean, what a sweet gig. I can only expect the best from M.L.S. club members.


And still on my list is Diamond Ruby by Joseph Wallace. I briefly met him last year at a WORD bookstore event, and I still haven't gotten around to reading his book. But man, do I love New York historical fiction, and this one takes place in the Coney Island of the 1920s. On of my favorite reads from a couple years ago was Dreamland by Kevin Baker, which covered turn-of-the-century (last century) NYC with gangsters, tenements, factory strikers, and sideshow entertainers.

World Party: Why I would probably like Showtime's The Tudors better

England was February's country of choice in the World Reading Challenge, and I chose the recent Man Booker Prize winner, Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel.

Setting: 16th-century Tudor England, during the reign of Henry VIII. Mantel chronicles the King's split from his wife, Catherine of Aragon, and pursuit of Anne Boleyn as he splits from Catholic Rome and declares himself Head of the Church of England—all this because he wanted to sleep with another chick!

At 651 pages, this was a book. I started it once, got to page 70 or so, and decided to start over and really concentrate. This is not a book to casually read on the subway. Wolf Hall is definitely a well- and interestingly-written novel, foremost because of its perspective. The entire book is written in the third-person present-tense, focusing on Thomas Cromwell, chief minister to the King. What's confusing is that in the narrative, he is not addressed by name, unless as part of a quote; Mantel simply refers to Cromwell as "him," which can be very confusing at first. Once you get into the swing of that, the book is pretty easy to get through.

I think Wolf Hall definitely deserves its mark as "prestigious-book-award-winner," but frankly, I was a little bored with it, completely because of personal taste. I have never had an interest in this time period of history. I find the ages of medieval, Renaissance, Enlightenment—the height of royalty in Europe—to be rather dark and barbaric, too much so for my tastes. Therefore, I didn't have enough of a background or interest in the subject matter to really enjoy this book. Aside from the very basics about Henry VIII and his wives, I could not recall many details about the outcome of these individuals (my AP Euro teacher would be so disappointed). I refrained from Wikipedia-searching until I had finished, because I figured the end would have a climactic conclusion, but no. Mantel seemed to cover only one aspect of Henry VIII's reign—his split with the Catholic church—and left out all the drama on which most recent literature focuses.

I wish I had read this as part of a book club or at least been able to discuss with someone who enjoys this time period and had a different perspective while reading. [Has anyone else read it?? Please comment if you have!] My Google-searching on Henry VIII and his six wives made for an enjoyable afternoon at work, but because it's the scandal and drama that piqued my interest, I'd probably prefer to see Henry's story on Showtime. Minus all the beheading.

What is the internet??

The February pick for the Idlewild bookclub was Tom Rachman's best-seller, The Imperfectionists—a welcome change of pace from last month's philosophical textbook.

This was an interesting book club choice. At first, I didn't think there would be much to discuss, but it turned out to be a good one. The story is about an English-language newspaper in Rome that, after fifty years of publication, is struggling to stay afloat in the changing landscape of news media. While this is the overarching plot, this book is really a collection of vignettes, each focusing on a different employee of the newspaper, in which their personal lives and work lives are interwoven.

The thing about the characters is...none of them are likable and each is flawed. (The one exception, in my opinion, is the lady who collected the newspapers, the one character not an employee.) I felt sympathy for some characters, was disgusted by others, but each of them were journalists, or exhibited what we decided could be described as typical "journalistic behavior"—somewhat cold, ambitious to the point of conniving. The women all seemed horrible, and I'm fully convinced Rachman has some serious woman issues that he was projecting. Despite disliking most of the characters, I was hungry to read each story, and they each deserved to be dissected. However, Rachman has this tendency to write an interesting character study and then slam a sentence onto the very end to indicate complete hopelessness for these characters. I found this trait very obvious, but I'm not sure anyone else at book club found it to be as poignant as I did!

Naturally our discussion led to technology and media and how the newspaper is nearly obsolete. How many people under the age of 30 currently subscribe to the daily print version of a newspaper? Not very many. I'm a lover of print, but realistically, technology allows a faster, easier look at the news. It's not difficult to see where the newspaper world is heading, but it's fascinating to see where it and technology have gone in just the past ten years.

To illustrate my point, watch the video below from 1994.

Why Libraries Kick Ass

Have I told you about my history in the library? Well, if not, here it is. In the fourth grade, my mom caught me organizing books on the shelves of Barnes & Noble and told me I needed to be a librarian. In high school, I worked in the public library as a Page and found it to be the best job ever (still is). I had so much fun, I was even determined to make a documentary called "The Secret Lives of Librarians" because my coworkers were so fun and interesting and so not your stereotypical librarian.

Now I have a big-girl job and I work in publishing, and I love it (except for the sitting in front of a computer 8 hours a day thing—my eyes, my eyes!). But I also just started Graduate school to earn my M.L.S. Yes, that means I will be a MASTER of Library Science. I hope to one day have a business card with the title "Super Librarian" or "Librarian Extraordinaire" or something to that effect.

Anyway, I read a brief blurb about this book in the NYTimes Book Review last week and...I NEED IT! I've put it on hold to pick up at a semi-local branch of the Brooklyn Public Library that is actually open on weekends (because no, MY local branch is neither open on the weekends nor past 6pm on weeknights...SOOOO easily accessible, thanks NYC). Greenpoint, here I come!

I have a strong belief that the public library as an institution will never disappear. Technology will change, methods of finding and using information will change, but the library can and will adapt as it has in the past. Libraries aren't just places to find books; they are information centers—community centers—constantly changing depending on how society searches for, finds, and uses information. Libraries are necessary to serve a need within a community, support underserved or overlooked populations, provide its users with the easiest and most useful access to the information requested. As much as I want to support publishers by buying their books, I think I'm a bigger proponent of the public library. Libraries inspire, and I don't think they will ever be irrelevant.

Book blurb:

Buried in info? Cross-eyed over technology? From the bottom of a pile of paper and discs, books, e-books, and scattered thumb drives comes a cry of hope: Make way for the librarians! They want to help. They're not selling a thing. And librarians know best how to beat a path through the googolplex sources of information available to us, writes Marilyn Johnson, whose previous book, The Dead Beat, breathed merry life into the obituary-writing profession.

This Book Is Overdue! is a romp through the ranks of information professionals and a revelation for readers burned out on the clichÉs and stereotyping of librarians. Blunt and obscenely funny bloggers spill their stories in these pages, as do a tattooed, hard-partying children's librarian; a fresh-scrubbed Catholic couple who teach missionaries to use computers; a blue-haired radical who uses her smartphone to help guide street protestors; a plethora of voluptuous avatars and cybrarians; the quiet, law-abiding librarians gagged by the FBI; and a boxing archivist. These are just a few of the visionaries Johnson captures here, pragmatic idealists who fuse the tools of the digital age with their love for the written word and the enduring values of free speech, open access, and scout-badge-quality assistance to anyone in need.

Those who predicted the death of libraries forgot to consider that in the automated maze of contemporary life, none of us—neither the experts nor the hopelessly baffled—can get along without human help. And not just any help—we need librarians, who won't charge us by the question or roll their eyes, no matter what we ask. Who are they? What do they know? And how quickly can they save us from being buried by the digital age?

What I've Read Lately

Library school has begun, and I am a busy little bee day-in and day-out. I can barely find time to go to the grocery store, so I certainly haven't found much time to blog about what I've been reading lately (which, actually, has been a lot, thanks to my 2.5 hour total commute to and from class on Mondays and Tuesdays!).  Here's a quick rundown. I have more to come:

Carolina Moon by Jill McCorkle — It's been a while, Jill. Colin had me read a story from an F. Scott Fitzgerald collection called "The Ice Palace," which features a girl from the South. After that, I knew it'd been too long since I'd read some Southern lit, and McCorkle is my go-to. Carolina Moon is about a small town in North Carolina and the eccentric folk whose lives seem to all intersect at a "cigarette rehab" called Quee's Place. McCorkle is so good at storytelling—weaving the lives and histories of these people together, overlapping yet creating unique stories. Even a murder mystery is thrown in to spice things up a notch. The characters are always the best part of McCorkle books, because they're so detailed. One section was so beautifully written that I completely teared up. Overall, not as good as Ferris Beach, my McCorkle fave, but still satisfying.

I Heart New York by Lindsey Kelk — I was looking for something lighthearted and sorta mindless before I embarked upon the massive Wolf Hall for my February World Reading choice. This is the story of a Londoner, Angela, who gets jilted by her longtime fiancee at her best friend's wedding and escapes to the Big Apple to find herself and put her life back together. I do like chick-lit, but I'm a little critical when it's about New York. Chick-lit always plays up the stereotypes of the city, when I think it should be more realistic. Exhibit A) Angela gets a cab from the airport and asks the driver to take her to "any hotel," at which point he rudely screams obscenities at her with what was some sort of New York accent. For one, cab drivers are usually on their hands-free device speaking to someone in their native tongue to bother speaking to their passengers. Secondly, in 2000, 84% of cab drivers were foreign-born. The chances of getting a stereotypical guy from Queens as your cab driver are incredibly slim if not completely unrealistic. Exhibit B) Angela goes shopping on Broadway in Soho midday and it's described as relatively calm. FALSE. Broadway in Soho is hell 24/7. I have strong feelings about that street, which was why I found it necessary to point out.

But anyway, like every chick-lit novel, I totally got sucked in and ended up really enjoying it. I find the whole "New York as mecca to find yourself" theme to be total crap, because this city is pretty rough; nothing happens as easily in real life as it happened for Angela. (Seriously, she didn't have to do a thing; life came to her.) But, I can understand why people would enjoy it. I was starry-eyed about NYC before I lived here, too. However, I liked Angela. She wasn't too ridiculous of a human being (except for her obnoxious spending habits. What 26-year-old freelance writer can pay for a week-long stay at an $800/night hotel room and daily shopping sprees that total in the thousands? Yeah right.). And Kelk built the anticipation in the story making me want to know what happens next.