Under Construction

Every now and then, I just want the drilling to stop.

That's all - not world peace, not health and riches, just a good solid hour without drilling.

I expect the students studying for their exams might agree with me.

Where to put a spoof?

I was in the public library the other day when I noticed this:



Now, at the risk of sounding like a character from Sesame Street: "one of these things is not like the other..."

For those of you who might not know, Molvania is not a real country, and the guide book is not a real guide book. It's a spoof of travel books - a joke aimed squarely at the Lonely Planet type books with which it is currently sharing shelf-space.

I wondered, for a moment, if I should say something to the librarians, and then realised they probably know - there just wasn't a better place to put it.

After all, where else would you put a spoof of a particular genre? 827.994 might work for Australian "humor and satire", but is that really a better place to put it than with the genre it is satirising? Perhaps having it interfiled with the books it is mocking is more appropriate.

But, still, the library geek in me thinks they should have put the 827 in the call number somewhere. It's been too long since I've taken a good look at the DDC, so this is probably a little bit off, but perhaps this would have been a more honest classification: 914.700827994.

Maybe I'm just putting too much thought into this for a Sunday morning...

Three books, Part Two

In one of my last posts, when I introduced the idea of the game "what three books would you choose for locking with a kidnap victim in a tower" (which makes much more sense if you think of the fact that the last two retellings of Rapunzel point out that she had exactly three books with her), I referenced a much more normal game (one with less kidnapping):

"If, by some miracle, you were able to plan ahead and keep three books with you on the off chance that you were shipwrecked on a deserted island, what three books would you take?"

These are my books:

1. The Complete Illustrated Works of Lewis Carroll.

Lewis Carroll's poems, in particular, are something near and dear to me. I could probably spend the next few years learning them by heart and reciting them to the trees quite happily. Besides, I might finally get around to reading Sylvie and Bruno. You never know.

2. Suur illustreeritud sõnaraamat, by Jean-Claude Corbeil and Ariane Archambault.

This is an illustrated dictionary that consists of exploded diagrams with every part labelled in English, Estonian, Russian, German and French. It kind of rocks. I have to hide it in another room so I don't stay up to midnight finding out what the French word for "casement window" is. Alone on a deserted island, I can waste as much time as I like on looking up random things.

3. The Bible, by various.

The Bible is the perfect book to have with you in such a situation. On the one hand, it's the anthology to end all anthologies. It has legends, history, poetry and philosophy. There are stories about battles, romances, politics, tales of daring-do and naval gazing. I maintain there's even a play in there (hello? The Song of Solomon has a Greek chorus, for crying out loud!). Some books are miserable, some books are joyful, some are perplexing and others are a wee bit sexy. And if you are willing to argue with the thing rather than blindly accept it word-for-word, there are puzzles that will have you changing your mind over and over again.

On the other hand, it's great for existential stuff. If you want to yell at God for abandoning you on an island, the Bible can help you with that. If you want to ask Him to rescue you, the Bible can help you with that. If you want to ask Him to change the way you see the world so that being lost on a deserted island doesn't seem so bad, the Bible can help you with that. And, woven throughout the entire thing, turning up in different places and in different ways, is the overarching message: "you are not alone".

Like I said, the perfect book for such a situation.

So, those are my three books. What are yours?

Three Books, Part 1, update

On second thought, The Complete Encyclopedia of Stitchery is not a good choice for locking with someone in a tower.

On the one hand, it could keep them occupied for hours on end, but on the other hand, it requires resources. You would have to keep supplying your victim with a steady stream of cloth and thread.

No, a much better book would be Mel Bay's Ukulele Chords, by Mel Bay. All you need to provide then is the ukulele and some spare strings in case one snaps.

Then you can happily leave your victim to be locked in the magic tower (which grows it's own fruit and vegetables) and only come to see them once a year.

I'm gravitating a bit towards the Rapunzel's Revenge scenario at this point.

Trashy Tabloid Attack!

I'm not a big fan of trashy tabloids. I find the celebration of all things vapid and vulgar just a little reprehensible.

Generally speaking, I hate bad journalism. I had the misfortune of learning what good journalism was supposed to look like in my high school English classes. I'm not sure if they still do it today (or even if they were supposed to do it when I was in school), but in my English class we learnt all about how the whole "writing for a newspaper" thing was supposed to work.

News reports are supposed to be informative, concise, non-biased and well written. Journalists are supposed to research carefully and write clearly. Then copy editors are supposed to check facts, find mistakes and make sure the writers haven't used bad spelling or poor grammar.

And then, in an ideal world, newspapers are supposed to present their readers with news, not gossip.

That is what a newspaper should be. Something well written, well researched and meaningful. That is what I want a news paper to be.

Needless to say, I hate most newspapers. I particularly hate trashy tabloids. Every time I see a trashy tabloid I have to fight the urge to track down a "journalist" and punch them in the face.

So I have to say, I am particularly annoyed by Nine MSN's tendency to throw a tabloid at me every time I log out of Hotmail.

When you log out of Hotmail, you get taken straight to the front page of one of the trashiest, most vapid online newspapers I have the privilege of encountering in my day. The layout it terrible. The headlines are offensively trashy. The pictures are usually the kind any good newspaper would be ashamed to print.

The whole thing screams: LOOK AT ME! FOLLOW MY LINKS! READ MY TRASH! YOU WANT TO KNOW MORE!!!

But I don't want to look at it. I don't want to follow the links or read the trash. I don't want to know the bit they've shown me, let alone more.

All I want is to log out of my email account without having a tabloid newspaper thrust into my face unbidden.

If I wanted to read a tabloid newspaper, I'd find one myself. It's not like I'm sitting around thinking, "Oh, I wish someone would tell me more about what the Kardashians are up to, but I have no idea where I could go to see dozens of photos of celebrities trying to walk to the corner shops in comfy pants and no make-up..."

Dear Nine MSN, You don't need to throw trashy tabloids at people. No, really, you don't. If you feel you really must drag every single person who uses your email services towards your news page, why not have at least two news pages (one for trash, and one for "real news") and give people the choice? You might earn yourselves a bit of respect that way.

Three Books, Pt 1

And so I'll read a book/ Or maybe two or three...

So, I've been fascinated by the fact that two recent retellings of the Rapunzel story (Disneys Tangled and Rapunzel's Revenge by Hale, Hale and Hale) have been very clear about the fact that Rapunzel had exactly three books in the tower.

Tangled never went into specifics about what the books were (EDIT: actually they did - see comment), but Hale, Hale and Hale showed us the titles of the books in their version:

• Girls Who Get Saved and the Princes Who Save Them
• Weave Your Own Twig Bonnet
• There's Always Bird Watching

Which made me really want at least one of those books to exist. At present, not-so-much. Give it time.

Anyway, it got me thinking about that game. You know the one: you have to imagine you've been shipwrecked on a deserted island, but somehow you were prepared for such things and you managed to take three books with you; you need to say what three books you would choose and why.

Well, for something different, how about we go with the following variation: you have to imagine you want to lock someone in a tower, and you want to chose three books that will distract them from escaping. They have to be real books that you have actually looked at in your travels.

What three books do you choose, and why?

My three picks for locking with someone in a tower would be:

The Lady of Shallott - the one where the entire book is just Tennyson's poem illustrated by Genevieve Cote. A) because everyone should have some poetry in their lives, even if they happen to be locked in a tower, and b) because the heroine is locked in a tower and dies when she leaves. The hidden message is: "Don't even think about looking out of the windows, it's not worth it".

The Complete Encyclopedia of Stitchery, by Mildred Graves Ryan (originally published in 1979). Knitting, embroidery, crochet... everything really, and with detailed, illustrated step-by-step instructions. You just need to make sure there's a constant supply of material, and hopefully your victim will keep her/himself occupied.

Gravesend by Jason Fischer. The world is full of zombies. The people who aren't zombies will probably shoot you anyway, just to be sure. You don't want to go out of the tower.

Of course, this is all working on the assumption that I kidnap the victim and lock them in the tower after they have already learnt to read...

The Librarian's Dilemma

One of the great things about working in a library is the fact that you get to know the collection really well.

You know to look for things in places other people might not think of - not because the books are "hidden" somewhere difficult to find, but rather because you have the freedom to think laterally.

So, for example, when I started learning German I not only went to the language section of the main collection, I also went to the curriculum collection. A number of academic libraries have a curriculum collection, although the collection may be known by a different name. These are designed to look like school libraries, so that Education students can see what kind of resources might be available to them when they go out to a school to teach.

I went to our CC to see what language resources they had, which is where I found one of my favourite "introduction to German" books Learn German (which I mentioned in my From Something to Nothing post.

I wanted my very own copy, but they appeared to be long out of print, so I ordered something that appeared to be a similar thing under a different title (Easy German) to see if it was related.

Turned out it was a later edition - and a substantially revised one at that. While the cartoon story was still there, the layout of the book had been completely overhauled and the illustrations were somewhat re-arranged as a result. The grammar points in the original had been peppered around the same page as the story, but in the new version they had been pulled out to their own pages and fleshed out a bit more. Oh, and a lot of the exercises from the original weren't there in the later version.

So, now that I knew a later version existed, the logical thing to do would be to order it for the CC... Except that the way things are at the moment, ordering a new edition would eventually lead to the old edition being "disposed of", if you know what I mean.

And, from a design perspective, they were quite different. I found the older version easier to read and more interactive, but the newer version more informative and in depth. If it were up to me, I'd definitely want to keep them both. Such things are, however, rarely up to me.

So I spent several weeks wondering if I should order the later edition of the book, knowing it would probably mean we would the older edition. This is particularly relevant to me at the moment, as I'm toying with the idea of looking at the design of introductory language texts as a Master's project.

In the end I bit the bullet and decided that, since I know own both versions (albeit, only in German - and the book does come in French and Spanish) the only people who will miss out are all of our members. And, hey, they probably wouldn't borrow out the older book anyway. Something about people, these days - they can't seem to see an old book on the shelf if there is a new book sitting right next to it...