The metamorphosis

The metamorphosis / Franz Kafka; adapted by Peter Kuper.—New York : Three Rivers Press, c2003.
77 p. : ill. ; 23 cm.
Translation by Kerstin Hasenpusch
ISBN: 1400052998

1. Family -- Fiction. 2. Graphic novels. 3. Insects -- Fiction. 4. Kafka, Franz, 1883-1924 -- Adaptations. 5. Metamorphosis—Fiction. 6. Short stories, Austrian -- 20th century.

I. Kafka, Franz, 1883-1924. Verwandlung. English. 2003.

741.5973

Traveling salesman Gregor Samsa wakes up one morning transformed into a giant bug. This makes it very difficult to get out of bed and impossible to get to work. It also makes for very awkward family dynamics. Kuper’s adaptation of one of the most famous literary works of the twentieth century scrupulously follows Kafka’s original story. What Kuper adds with his dark shadings and heavy lines is a feeling of dark and claustrophobic gloom. It gives his cartoons the feeling of the work of some of Kafka’s contemporaries in the visual arts, the Expressionists. Gregor’s father looks like he could have stepped out of a drawing by George Grosz and the atmosphere of crushing suffering is reminiscent of the works of Otto Dix or Käthe Kollwitz. And while this is not the only interpretation of the story, it is certainly a valid one that Kuper illustrates very successfully.

iHCPL Pot Luck #57 TXT U L8R - Texting

During the recovery from Hurricane Ike I sent a number of text messages. I watched the embedded video anyway, and it was a good quick introduction. I’ve used text messages only during the emergency because it’s not included in my cell phone plan, so they are an added expense over and above voice messages. When I’ve sent them I have not used text lingo, but knowing about the Lingo 2 Word site could be very useful in deciphering any text message I might receive in the future and in reading Lauren Myracle books. The New York Times article reminded me of a press release which I sent out about three decades ago to promote the Ohio County Public Library’s new (at that time) collection of books on tape. It was in the form of a safety message to drivers warning them Don’t Read While Driving, instead use the new audiobooks from the library as a safe alternative.

City of the mind

City of the mind : a novel / Penelope Lively.-- New York : HarperCollinsPublishers, c1991.
231 p. ; 22 cm.
1st U.S. ed. "First published in Great Britain in 1991 by André Deutsch Ltd."--T.p. verso.
ISBN: 9780060166663

1. Architects – Fiction. 2. London (England) – Fiction. 3. Psychological fiction.

823.914

Architect Matthew Hallard is distracted. He’s engaged in a large building project, but as he gazes about the site he sees not only the London of his own time in 1990, but buildings that take him back to the 1820s or to the Renaissance. As his mind wanders from his present cares: the break-up of his marriage, his eight-year-old daughter Jane, encounters with an unscrupulous developer, and the good-looking young woman he chanced to encounter in a sandwich shop, his story is interleaved with the stories of other Londoners from other times: an air-raid warden during the blitz, a Victorian natural scientist, Elizabethan explorer Martin Frobisher, and several unnamed children from the past.

Lively ponders the fragile bonds of human affection, estrangement, loss, hope and industry as it swirls through the city and through time. Ultimately it’s a reassuring meditation.

Earthsearch

Earthsearch : Series I & II: The Complete Radio Series / James Follett.— [Bath] : BBC Audiobooks, 2006.
Downloadable audio file (9 hr., 39 min.) (138873 KB)
Unabridged
Originally broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1981 and 1982.
Contents: Series I: Planetfall -- First Footprint City -- Sands of Kyros -- The Solaric Empire -- The Pools of Time -- Across the Abyss -- New Blood – Marooned -- Star Cluster: Tersus Nine – Earthfall – Series II: Return – Flood – Surrender – Solaria – Sundeath – Supermass – Deathship – Megalomania – Earth – Earthvoice.
Cast: Commander Telson, Sean Arnold; Sharna, Amanda Murray; Darv, Haydn Wood; Astra, Kathryn Hurlbutt; Angel One, Sonia Fraser; Angel Two, Gordon Reid; Elka, Jill Lidstone; Bran, Michael Maloney; Tidy, David Gooderson; George, Stephen Garlick.
ISBN: 9781405698740

1. Interplanetary voyages– Drama. 2. Interstellar travel – Drama. 3. Interstellar travel – Humor. 4. Science fiction radio programs.

791.4472

One-hundred-fifteen years after it left earth, the ten-mile long starship Challenger and its crew of four returns to its home world to find that it’s gone. The moon remains alone orbiting Sol. The Sentinel on the moon tells the crew that it was dragged away by its inhabitants half-a-million years ago. In their search for the missing planet the grandchildren of the original crew encounter the mishaps of many interstellar travelers: manic robots bent on destruction, grumpy androids, galactic emperors who rule a few small asteroids, another massive starship the mirror image of their own, shortage of oxygen, hostile humans who take them for aliens, worshipful humans that take them for gods, black hole gravity wells, time dilation, the temptation to eat forbidden fruit, starship computers who want to rule the world, androids that want to rule the universe, and ten-mile high pyramids filled with mysterious secrets, planet engulfing floods, in short, just about every science fiction cliché imaginable, and played absolutely straight faced with tongue firmly in cheek. This is a marvelously fun space opera.

The daughter of time

The daughter of time / by Josephine Tey; narrated by Derek Jacobi.— North Kingstown : Sound Library/BBC Audiobooks America, [2002], p1987.
6 sound discs (5 hrs., 19 min.) : digital ; 4 3/4 in.
Republication of the 1987 recording by Chivers Audio Books, Bath
Compact discs.
ISBN: 9781572702448

1. Grant, Alan (Fictitious character) -- Fiction. 2. Mystery fiction. 3. Police -- Great Britain -- Fiction. 4. Richard III, King of England, 1452-1485 -- Fiction.

Was the last Plantagenet king of England the complete villain that was portrayed on stage by William Shakespeare a century later? Scottish playwright and novelist Elizabeth Mackintosh presents the case for the defense in this mystery novel published in 1951 under her pen name Josephine Tey. Scholarly historians had made the case before this, but Daughter of Time turned historical debate into a work of popular entertainment that has gathered critical praise as a work of literature long after it first appeared. In this, it is not unlike Shakespeare’s success at turning history into popular entertainment in his series of plays on the War of the Roses that culminated with “Richard III.” The works share more than an intriguing central character.

But what of the character of this English king who, although he ruled for only a little over two years, is still the source of vigorous debate between his detractors and supporters? Inspector Alan Grant of Scotland Yard takes on the case out of boredom caused by forced confinement. While waiting for a broken leg to heal, he becomes fascinated by a portrait of Richard. To Grant, with the eye of a detective, he looks like a man who should be on the bench deciding the case, not someone on the stand accused of the cold-blooded murder of his two young nephews for political gain. But, as a policeman, Grant knows that cases aren’t solved by hunches or clues they’re solved by taking statements. Fortunately, a friend steers someone his way who’s eager to do the legwork of research and round up the statements, American amateur historian Brent Carradine. As Carradine digs up the documentation, Grant ponders the evidence and how it all fits together and who would stand to gain by the princes’ death.

Actor Derek Jacobi gives a superb reading. His American accent for Carradine is good, if not perfect, but Grant and all the other British characters are flawless. It’s little wonder that Booklist selected it as one of the “Top 10 Mystery Audiobooks” in 2001.

___________
Narkiewicz, Beverly S. “Honk If You Love Richard III.” New York Times (May 21, 2000); page TR10

Harris, Karen. “Top 10 Mystery Audiobooks.” Booklist (May 1, 2001) page 1616

“Second Reading: Josephine Tey: Sleuthing Into The Mystery of History.” The Washington Post (March 12, 2003) page C01

Yeti attack!

Dr. Who Yeti attack! / by Mervyn Haisman and Henry Lincoln ; starring Patrick Troughton ; linking narration by Frazer Hines.-- Hampton, NH : BBC Worldwide Ltd., 2001
5 sound discs (5 hr., 10 min.) : digital ; 4 3/4 in.
ISBN: 9780563526551
"Two original BBC Television soundtracks."--Container.

The abominable snowmen (serial NN) by Mervyn Haisman and Henry Lincoln; directed by Gerald Blake. Original television broadcast September – November, 1967. Cast: The Doctor, Patrick Troughton; Victoria Waterfield, Deborah Watling; Jamie McCrimmon, Frazer Hines; Khrisong, Norman Jones; Padmasambhava, Wolfe Morris; Ralpachan, David Baron; Rinchen, David Grey; Sapan, Raymond Llewellyn; Songsten, Charles Morgan; Thonmi, David Spenser; Professor Travers, Jack Watling; Yeti, Reg Whitehead, Tony Harwood, Richard Kerley, and John Hogan.

Web of fear (serial QQ) by Mervyn Haisman and Henry Lincoln directed by Douglas Camfield. Original television broadcast February – March, 1968. Cast: The Doctor, Patrick Troughton; Victoria Waterfield, Deborah Watling; Jamie McCrimmon, Frazer Hines; Professor Travers, Jack Watling; Anne Travers, Tina Packer; Captain Knight, Ralph Watson; Col. Lethbridge-Stewart, Nicholas Courtney; Corporal Blake, Richardson Morgan; Corporal Lane, Rod Beacham; Craftsman Weams, Stephen Whittaker; Driver Evans, Derek Pollitt; Harold Chorley, Jon Rollason; Julius Silverstein, Frederick Schrecker; Soldier, Bernard G. High; Soldier, Joseph O'Connell; Staff Sgt. Arnold, Jack Woolgar.

1. Doctor Who (Fictitious character) – Drama. 2. Doctor Who (Television program : 1963-1989) 3. Human-alien encounters -- Drama. 4. Science fiction television programs. 5. Yeti – Drama.

791.4561

You would expect to find some Yeti in Tibet, so that’s where English explorer Professor Travers goes looking for them in 1935. He does find some just outside a monastery, but they’re not at all what he expects them to be, rather then abominable snowmen, they turn out to be robots, furry and cute but ferocious and controlled by small metal globes concealed in their chests. And controlling the globes is a disembodied alien, the Great Intelligence, as it modestly calls itself, trying to control the monastery as a first step toward world domination. Fortunately for Travers, the monks and the rest of the world, The Doctor and his two human companions, Jamie and Victoria, also happen to drop into this particular bit of space-time, just in time to foil the Great Intelligence and set the monastery back to a more orderly and orthodox discipline.

Thirty years later, in its next attempt at planetary conquest, the Great Intelligence casts aside all attempts at subtlety. It invades the London subway system. Yeti with glowing eyes run amok spraying most everything with a sticky and deadly web-like substance that they shoot from guns. Once again double agents are working behind the lines, and it’s hide-and-seek with glue guns in the dark. This time it takes the Doctor, his friends and the entire British Army to dig out the evil doers and clean up the mess.

Since video recordings of several episodes of these vintage 60s television science fiction shows have gone missing over the years these audio soundtracks with voice-over narration are a good way to recapture most of the fun of the originals.

Sick building

Sick building / by Paul Magrs ; read by Will Thorp. -- [Bath] : BBC Audiobooks, 2008.—
1 sound file (31366 KB) (2 hr., 11 min.)
Downloadable audio file.
Title from: Title details screen
Unabridged
Requires OverDrive Media Console
Mode of access: World Wide Web
(Doctor Who)
ISBN: 9781405646925 (sound recording : OverDrive Audio Book)

1. Doctor Who (Fictitious character) – Fiction. 2. Dwellings – Fiction. 3. Life on other planets – Fiction. 4. Robots – Fiction. 5. Science fiction.

823.914

The Voracious Craw an omnivorous mountain-sized predator is about to gobble up everything on Tiermann's World: saber-toothed tigers, plant life, the landscape itself and even Tiermann himself, his family and his deluxe Dreamhome. The Tiermanns own their own planet and live in such luxury because Professor Ernest Tiermann invented most of the automated furnishings in Dreamhome and the Domovoi, the artificial intelligence that guides them. Professor Tiermann still rules the roost, dominating his wife and their teenaged son, the only human inhabitants of the planet, and he does not like an unannounced time lord and his companion dropping in unannounced. He already knows about the Voracious Craw, and he already has his own plans for evacuation, thank you very much, and he plans to do it his way without outside interference. What Tiermann doesn’t know is that it won’t be outsiders who will foil his escape plans. He considers the furnishings, which he has endowed with human characteristics and consciousness, as expendable bits of machinery that must be abandoned to the Craw, does not sit well with the Domovoi.

Fun Home

Fun home : a family tragicomic / Alison Bechdel.— Boston : Houghton Mifflin, 2007.
232 p. : ill ; 23 cm.
ISBN: 9780618871711

1. Bechdel, Alison -- Comic books, strips, etc. 2. Cartoonists -- United States -- Comic books, strips, etc. 3. Fathers and daughters -- Comic books, strips, etc.

741.5973

Bechdel's memoir of growing up with her closeted gay father in rural Pennsylvania, where her parents taught English, and father worked in the family funeral home, or “Fun Home” as she and her brothers referred to it, might be characterized as tragi-ironic, more than tragicomic. It’s a melancholy childhood of family secrets and alienation. It’s the story of her father’s death—was it a suicide or an accident—and of her relationship to him.

It’s constructed as a series of chapters that are meditative revelations, each one building on and revealing more than the previous one. Each one uses a different work of literature and its author as the reflecting mirror for her family life: the Greek myth of Icarus and his father Deadalus, A Happy Death by Albert Camus, Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time or as she translates it, “this means not just lost but ruined, undone, wasted, wrecked, and spoiled” (page 119), The Wind in the Willows, “The Ideal Husband” and “The Importance of Being Ernest” by Oscar Wilde, James Joyce’s Ulysses, and Homer’s original. Her reason for this abundance of literary references, she explains after comparing her father to a character in an F. Scott Fitzgerald book and her mother to one “right out of Henry James,” (page 66) “I employ these allusions to James and Fitzgerald not only as descriptive devices, but because my parents are most real to me in fictional terms. And perhaps my cool aesthetic distance itself does more to convey the Arctic climate of our family than any particular literary comparison.” (page 67)

Part of the irony is that she learned of her father’s hidden sexuality, only as a result of her coming out to her parents as a lesbian when she was in college only four months before he died. A few weeks after her letter home, her mother, not her father, called to tell her about it. Instead of an opportunity to talk about a common experience, it became another instance of their antipodal relationship. As she puts it earlier in the book, “I was Spartan to my father’s Athenian. Modern to his Victorian. Butch to his Nelly. Utilitarian to his Aesthete.” (page 15).

Yet the book begins and ends with scenes of her father catching her as she leaps into his arms. She has said that she is not angry with her father, although her affection for him reveals itself more clearly in her interviews with the press, than in the book. Her statement there is, “His bursts of kindness were as incandescent as his tantrums were dark.” (page 21)

This is a highly lauded book that deserves every bit of its praise. Fun Home is a masterpiece of memoir drawn in black and white cartoons tinted in shades of blue.

Case histories

Case histories / by Kate Atkinson ; read by Susan Jameson.-- Hampton, NH : BBC Audiobooks America, p2004.
9 sound discs (ca. 10 hrs. 44 min.) : digital ; 4 3/4 in.
Originally published by Chivers Audio, Bath in 2004
Unabridged
Compact discs
ISBN: 9780792733836

1. Brodie, Jackson (Fictitious Character) -- Fiction. 2. Cambridge (England) -- Fiction. 3. Loss (Psychology) -- Fiction. 4. Missing persons -- Fiction. 5. Mystery fiction.

823.914

Retired Cambridge police inspector Jackson Brodie has set up as a private detective. Unfortunately, his business is experiencing a downturn, there are only a few errant spouses to trail and his one steady customer is the eccentric and wealthy old cat lady, who keeps him busy tracking down stray cats. Then suddenly he has three new clients with three old cases. Theo wants him to find the murderer of his beloved daughter. The case is ten years old and he thinks the police have given up. The Land sisters, back in Cambridge for their father’s funeral, want to know what happened to their sister who disappeared thirty years ago when she was three. Then the sister of a the woman convicted of axe murdering her husband wants him to track down her runaway niece, the niece she’d promised her sister to care for like her own. It’s not a very hopeful caseload, and to add to these annoyances, someone is trying to kill Brodie.


Atkinson writes a very literate mystery, built on her characters, that shifts back and forth in time. It reveals both unexpected and solutions to the cases and motivation from Brodie’s own past. Once again, Jameson, the narrator of Atkinson’s Behind the Scenes at the Museum, is exceptionally skillful and effective.

Behind the scenes at the museum

Behind the scenes at the museum / Kate Atkinson; narrated by Susan Jameson. – [North Kingstown]: BBC Audiobooks America, 2008
10 sound discs (12 hrs., 20 min.) : digital ; 4 3/4 in.
Unabridged
Compact discs.
Whitbread Book of the Year. (1995)
ISBN: 9780792755067

1. Domestic fiction. 2. Historical fiction. 3. Women -- England -- Fiction. 4. Yorkshire (England) -- Fiction.

823.914

Four generations of a Yorkshire family narrated by the youngest member of the clan, the precocious Ruby Lennox, who begins her witty and near-omniscient narration as a freshly conceived zygote in 1951 and winds it up with the death of her mother in the 1990s. It’s a relief to know that Ruby’s still alive by the end of the books, because, as she points out, the members of her family have a strong tendency to leave life suddenly by means of explosions, war, automobile accidents, drowning, or just running off and never being heard from again. Then there’s an alcoholic gene in most of the men, which, while it doesn’t contribute to domestic happiness, keeps the plots churning.

Jameson has a perfect voice for Ruby and the rest of her Northern clan, and for the sharp humor of Atkinson’s prose. This is a wonderful book to hear.

Lush Life

Lush life / Richard Price ; read by Bobby Cannavale.—New York : Macmillan Audio, 2008.
11 sound discs (13 hr.) : digital ; 4 3/4 in.
Unabridged
Compact discs
ISBN: 9781427203205

1. Lower East Side (New York, N.Y.) – Fiction. 2. Police – Fiction. 3. Mystery fiction.

813. 54

Restaurant manager Eric Cash has had a bad night. He went out for a night of bar hopping with the new bartender Ike Marcus and a friend of Ike’s, who’s drunk even before the hopping starts. Just before they head into Café Berkmann, where Eric and Ike work, Ike is gunned down. Eric tells the cops that it was an attempted hold-up, and Ike’s last words were something like, "Not tonight, my man." But the cops are suspicious of Eric’s story.

Lush Life is a richly detailed police procedural set in Manhattan’s Lower East Side in the first years of the twenty-first century. Price, who grew up in a housing project in the Bronx has a real gift for dialog and speech and for the rhythm of urban life. The book has all the heartache and style of the Billy Strayhorn song with which it shares a title.

iHCPL Books, Readers and Beyond #55 Getting the Most Out of Facebook

Exercise 1. If you haven't already, sign up for a Facebook account.

I signed up during the original iHCPL, thinking that it would be a useful way to keep up with people at work and with other librarians that I’ve worked with before in ALA, in other libraries and in the other TLA (the Tennessee Library Association). It has been useful for that, but it’s also become a way to keep up with friends and family around the country. I’ve often read that electronic media flattens hierarchies. This was a phenomena that started in the pre-internet age of history with e-mail and chat groups. Now, over the past year, I’ve also learned that social networking dissolves the boundaries between work, home, church, and the people I know in each of these settings.

I was delighted to read iStar’s post that Facebook was back as a subject of study, because I find it a frustratingly difficult site to navigate. I often have a devil of a time trying to figure out how the @#$%^ thing works.

It’s not that I dislike the site; I use it often, and I enjoy staying in touch with my friends a lot easier than keeping up with multiple e-mail correspondence or with a listserv (I know at this point some readers may be thinking, “Gasp, how last millennium can he get?”). So while I enjoy Facebook, I fear I may be perpetually stuck in clueless noob status.

Exercise 2. Search for people you may know and add a friend or two.

I used People You May Know to add another two people from work.

Exercise 3. Add an application from one of the above suggestions or search using Find More - you can always delete it. Play around with the application for at least 5-10 minutes.

From games I added MouseHunt because it was the first one that popped up. I tooted the horn three times and caught two mice. I bought 4 pieces of cheddar. After the requisite ten minutes of play I deleted the application.

Exercise 4. Write a post to your blog about your experience.

The 10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know post was helpful, but not as helpful as I'd hoped it might be. I sorted Friends into Work, Church, and Family groups, but still found the privacy choices to be overly broad and not very useful. But I did discover how to delete the Gifts application, and I finally found where the networks were hidden and was able to join the HCPL one. Previously I had searched in vain in groups, oblivious to the fact that networks and groups are completely different concepts in Facebook.

Vampire loves

Vampire loves / Joann Sfar ; color by Audré Jardel ; translation by Alexis Siegel. – New York : First Second, c2006.
186 p. : col. ill. ; 22 cm.
1st American edition
Originally published in France under the titles Grand Vampire, tome 1: Cupidon s'en fout (2001); Grand Vampire, tome 2: Mortelles en tête (2002); Grand Vampire, tome 3: Transatlantique en solitaire (2002); Grand Vampire, tome 4: Quai des brunes (2003) by Guy Delcourt Productions, Paris.
ISBN: 9781596430938 (pbk.)

1. Vampires – Comic books, strips, etc. 2. Supernatural – Comic books, strips, etc.

741.5944

Ferdinand the vampire has a very unfulfilling love life. This makes him a depressed vampire. He has an on again off again relationship with “Liana, but everyone calls her Lani [who] is a mandragora, a girl/plant. She was born under a hanging tree and her curse is that she drives men crazy.” The girls, disembodied spirits, vampires, and giant centipedes who are attracted to Ferdinand, he finds too aggressive and wild for his taste. Whenever he meets a girl—and they’re usually human—who reciprocates his affections some surreal change of plot parts them.

Jardel’s choice of colors playfully follow Sfar’s episodic plot lines, which wander from romantic encounters and complications to play with a jar of “Monster Putty,” to adventure and detective stories, and all this plays out in an environment of the supernatural. Through dialog and drawing human desires and frustrations are played out in a mirror of the fantastic with gentle humor.

The Graveyard Book

The graveyard book / Neil Gaiman ; with illustrations by Dave McKean. – New York : HarperCollins, c2008.
312 p. : ill. ; 22 cm.
ISBN: 9780060530921 (trade binding)

813.54

1. Cemeteries -- Fiction. 2. Dead -- Fiction. 3. Newbery Medal. 4. Orphans -- Fiction. 5. Supernatural -- Fiction.

As a toddler Nobody “Bod” Owens jumped the rail of his crib and slipped out of his house and wandered up to an old cemetery. It was a good thing for him that he did. A ruthless assassin was methodically knifing to death everyone in his family, and little Bod escaped the murderer just in time to be taken in by the ghostly inhabitants of the graveyard. For the next decade and a half they raise, educate, care for him, and keep him safe from the man who’s still determined to kill him.

As the only living resident of the graveyard, Bod is taught a few special skills: skills normally reserved only for the deceased, skills like fading, sliding, and dreamwalking. He learns his ABCs from the gravestones. He learns to stay away from dangerous places, like the ghoul-gate (every graveyard has one) and the school in town. There are also scary encounters with the guardian of the treasure deep under the hill, the Indigo Man with his sharp stone blade, and Jack the murderer.

Like its model, Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book, The Graveyard Book alternates between fast paced, frightening adventure and reassurance that there are more experienced helpers and protectors to guide a child through the trials of growing up.