Wednesday, September 30, 2015
Be More Bookish - Week 9
Week 9 - Assignment 2
Some things when paired together work wonderfully, for example a light bulb screws into a light socket gives us light. Other things when paired together fail fabulously, for example watching the eraser melt on the end of a pencil when stuck into said light socket (disclaimer: absolutely do not do this it may result in electrocution or fire, not that I would know from personal experience). Failing fabulously is what I think when thinking about book trailers. Prior to this I didn't know that they existed. And after watching them on Youtube now I just think they are terrible. Okay, I understand the notion behind the purpose for online book trailers. The overhead cost to produce a book trailer is probably astoundingly inexpensive to traditional advertising. The only thing a publisher has to pay for is the cost of the video production company to produce the trailer. After that there's not much to it. The infrastructure of the internet is there for free, you don't have to pay for airtime or ad space like in traditional TV or newspaper advertising. I think the crux of the book trailer media is that it just doesn't fit the branding of the experience of books. Look at the human expression in celebrating books encompassed in book readings, book signings, book clubs, e-readers, tablets, libraries, blogs, publisher conventions, fan conventions and so on. Each event characterizes or celebrates the intimate experience we have singularly with ourselves reading written words on a page. Books are instructions for a complex story that we transcribe to our brain's imagination that we interpret alone but can celebrate together once we partake in the content.
Book trailers circumvent all of that. They tell us visual/audio media without any insight to whether we will like the experience of reading the content. At best book trailers give one an ambiguous idea that a certain title will exist in the near future. And even so it's frivolous to try to do the literal preview of text scrolling text on a screen. It takes to much time to communicate the information necessary to decide if one wants to commit to the material. A real example of this that failed fantastically was when comic book publishers in early to mid 2000's where trying to decide on new media to increase story circulation. One idea that should never have been commercially available (and was ultimately ignored by comic fans) were animated comic book panels on DVD. These were literally DVD productions that showed comic book panels with slight animation within the panels and time sequenced speech bubbles. The video would last 20 to 30 minutes and was extremely boring. Many people where confused by the product's advertising thinking they were regular animated cartoons of their favorite comic book characters and sorely disappointed after their purchase. However the medium was ill suited for comic book fans from the beginning and wasn't an acceptable experience to the preferred method of looking at comic panels in print form or a digital book equivalent.
From the articles provided for this assignment, the idea of book trailers seems to be pushed heavily by publishing companies. While publishing companies do the best they can to make money off their products with book trailers. It should be remembered that they are scratching to find the best business practices that make sense for successful sales. And if marketing research shows that book trailers are not helping them to achieve sales, publishers will move onto the next thing that will. Till then I'll just stick to reading the book jackets.
Week 9 - Assignment 3
Be More Bookish has been insightful in it's purpose to provide passive training modules for new librarian staff. If I had anything critical feedback regarding the program it would be regarding access to the training blog. While staff are maintaining a public blog regarding the comprehension of the articles and assignments given. The content for the weekly assignments can only be accessed internally from computers at the branches to the library's servers. I would encourage training and assignments to be posted to a public account much like the ones that library staff are using to blog on.
Thanks for sharing the insight and resources that were dispensed during the 9 week courses. I have already begun sharing website links with branch patrons and other coworkers referenced from the Be More Bookish blog when appropriate.
Tuesday, September 29, 2015
Be More Bookish - Week 8
Week 8 - Assignment 3
Biography narrative nonfiction - can be found in Children's & Adult Biography section however if it was part of the dewy decimal system at the branches they would be in the 920 section.
Recommended biography genre: Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris.
History narrative nonfiction - can be found in several places around a branch using Dewy decimal system however mostly can be found in the following non-ficiton areas in both children's and adult sections: 940's to the end of Dewy, scattered through 300's-400's dependent on the topic, and scattered among 600's.
Recommended history genre: Devil in the White City, The Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson.
Science narrative nonfiction - can be found in children's and adult section from 500's - 530's.
Recommended science genre: Cosmos a personal journey, by Carl Sagan
Faith narrative nonfiction - can be found mostly through children's and adult sections 200's - 300 in dewy decimal.
Recommendation faith genre: Going clear : Scientology, Hollywood, and the prison of belief by Lawrence Wright,
Week 8 - Assignment 4
Cosmos by Carl Sagan - If you would ask any living american what their perception to high school education was like towards that math and sciences you might get answers like,"I didn't understand it" or,"it was boring". And unless you had a really good math or science teacher your own experience may have been the same. Increasingly local school board vote to defund educational innovations to math and science programs that engage active learning. Leaving students to fall to historical passive learning techniques, such as lectures, which fails to engage most children. To break the passive trend of learning Cosmos was made to actively engage a wide range of audience members and included a wide perspective of math, history, religion, culture, economics, and creativity.
Cosmos was created to actively engage the viewers for it's TV broadcasts in the 1980's and invited viewers aboard the "star ship of the imagination" to learn about how societies have come to understand our modern observations of the universe and our place in it. A book of the same name was published that could be read as a companion to the TV broadcast or read independently. Sagan guides the reader through cultural histories like how did we come to have the perspectives of religion versus science? He also engages in thought experiments like how time-space is a 4th dimension and why would it become a physical flat circle if one could travel at the speed of light? Sagan ponders that notion of does a god or gods exist and are our own highly-creative intelligent species alone in the galaxy? Finally, he helps readers to understand their place in the universe and where humans as a species could end up in the future. In a very thoughtful and well presented argument for why humans need to engage science on all levels of life and economic status (not just leaving it up to the classically trained scientist, governments, and corporations) and be authors of our own destiny in the galaxy. Though this book could be recommended to anyone, I would emphasis it to secondary education students to engage multi-perspective thinking where they may not be receiving it in their science education classes.
Going Clear by Lawerence Wright - Who can say that they founded their own world wide religion in one lifetime. Ray Bradbury can say that without question, for better or worse. Bradbury had a variety of life experience growing up and embellished other experiences that may not have happened. Additionally aided by his creativity Bradbury was a prolific writer who had a charismatic personality that enabled others to be persuaded by his ideology written in his book Dianetics. However as the Scientology movement got bigger and money was no longer an issue Bradbury began to demand more loyalty from his faithfuls, who followed his devotions of auditing their psyche, in hopes of reaching enlightenment. Eventually governments became hostile towards the group of Bradbury's followers as their numbers and influence increased. In particular Bradbury was caught red handed with plans to infiltrate the US government to crush his critics in what Bradbury called Operation Snow White. The US took note and on allegations of espionage increased FBI investigations into Scientology compounds and members. Eventually Bradbury became paranoid enough to gather his most faithful called the SeaOrg, bought a derelict cruise ship, packed up his followers and left the US to live in the ocean as a religion without a nation. And this is only the beginning of the history of the Church of Scientology.
This narrative non-fiction is such a compelling read that it is almost seemingly impossible to put down. And there is so much evidence provided by the author of the churches' activities, that even if only half of it was presented, it would still be a compelling example of what happens when to many people give one person to much power. Why are groups of people persuaded to engage in horrific voluntary acts of depravity thinking they are saving themselves and the world calling it faith? How is it that those who want out, when they don't believe what their ideology teaches anymore, are either ostracized, humiliated, or disappeared by the same group who welcomed them with open arms? Be prepared to ride an emotional cringe-inducing roller coaster ride that looks into the leaders, faith, and followers of Scientology. This non-fiction title would be recommended to anyone interested in crime, religion, human perspective to culture, and cults.
Be More Bookish - Week 7
Week 7 - Assignment 2
Thoughts on the article "New Adult: Needless Marketing-Speak Or Valued Subgenre?".
So the gist of this article points to what is going on within publishing where adult themes are being shoe horned into young adult literature. The traditional age range the YA lit demographic is thought to be 18 to 29. But it thrills publishers that older adults are reading this genre which puts more money in their pockets. However the backlash comes from authors who say that the traditional YA genre they want to write for is being confused and warped into PG-13 versions of Shades of Grey. The author backlash argument has some merit to it and seems to be reflected by traditional genre reading communities. This article does point out that most of the books that are increasingly becoming YA lit are just washed down romance novel from a tween's point of view. Often the protagonist in these genre's are female young adults who are coming into their own through an adventure while pursuing a romantic lead on the side. Regardless of the title (Hunger Games and Twilight) fans realize the latest gimmick that publishers are playing to get more sales. Often at literary conferences themed on traditional YA lit like comic books and sci-fi fans actively boo the presence of these titles that have a twinge bit of a their favorite fiction but rely to heavily on the romantic bit to make it engaging for them. Where as fantasy (Harry Potter for example) that has a strong detailed setting and character adventures and just a twinge romance are fully excepted into the fold of traditional literary fandom.
So while authors are the creators of the content they never truly hold all the cards. There are various methods to sell books and shaking up a genre or two where money can be made will certainly be where publishing companies will scurry too. However the reading community seems to respond to traditional genre stereotypes and keep their favorite titles close to them. This still won't stop infuriating them when Barnes & Nobles adds a Teen Paranormal Romance aisle to their sales floor because it just sells well.
Thoughts on the article "A Not-So-Young Audience for Young Adult Books":
This piece primarily comments on the feeling that older adult might feel while reading YA lit. The author of the essay reports that they primarily read YA lit for the nostalgia as the appeal and that those that are dismissive of the simplified ending are kind of missing the appeal of why older adults are picking up these titles. I would say that there is a similar feeling for the nostalgia that is created when reading something to remember what we may have felt at some point in the past. I mean it usually something that we have a simplified memory of that makes us feel comfortable in the present. Like a favorite vacation spot or a favorite meal that was served at home or at a restaurant. Just for comparison the opposite end of a continuum in relation to nostalgia would be post traumatic stress. The author made mention of this point when talking about reading books like "The fault in our Stars" which I believe is a YA romance. And most people have that previous memory of being smitten by someone else that they deeply attracted to whether it's reciprocated or not. Those nostalgic feelings can feel like they are transporting people through time in their brains to a place that feels much simpler and younger. Of course the author also mentions that books that are YA lit which don't use romantic leads or have nostalgic endings, go for a darker twist that most people avoid. Like in the Outsiders when a childhood friend of the protagonist is responsible for murdering someone. The reader can only imagine how immediately stressful trying to hide your teenage buddy from the police who just fatally stabbed a rival gang member. The dynamics of such an event would change someone for life, usually not for the better. However this classic YA lit will not get the same face time from an adult readers except those interested in catching up with books they missed as a child or have their own children who need to read from a school's summer reading list.
So what's Stackedbooks.com topical niche in the bloggosphere? The two bloggers that run this site, Kimberly and Kelly, say that they met in grad school when working on their information studies. Between the two of them it seems from their references that they have a lot of experience in YA lit. So guess what, they tend to blog on teen oriented titles. They say on their website that they give honest reviews, which is usually code for their opinion. Also from reading a handful of their post the take away is that they have a first person narrative that has a kinda distinct voice or personality to their reviews. This is fine for those that like that kind of style. Again to keep a fan base of people to come back bloggers need to have a narrative voice in their blog that readership can identify with. And if that readership like edgy, impulsive, witty blogging I think there's plenty of that content on this site. I have to admit though it is neat that two people collaborate on the site. Usually people like to have one blogger that they only one to hear from which puts that onus of content creation for the blog on one person and that can be a lot of work sometimes. So it's cleaver that they split it up into two people so that they have some downtime from the blog and can cater to other activities occur in real life.
Week 7 - Assignment 4
While publisher's website may not be the most exciting place to decide what book may be the next one you read. It may help from time to time if you have a favorite publisher to check out what they're selling. Between the actual printing and shipping books to customers and book stores there's a lot of time also spent on promoting their products. Like sales representatives will go out with a specific theme in mind to usually sell to retail stores, website tend to have the same perspective with their visitors. While it is very easy to be dismissive about advertising as being a campaign to rally the troop around a brand. If publishers were not to promote their materials sales would most likely be dismal and the author would have to find a new publisher or just be to discouraged to ever attempt to publish again.
So looking at the teen books on Harpercollins.com and Harlequin.com there are two distinct marketing techniques. Harpercollins.com in their teen section is bee-lining straight to YA romance novels. They have a few titles that may be fantasy or paranormal teen adventures but it's almost exclusively romance of a young teen falling for the boy of her dreams. Harpercollins.com is taking a stand that they don't need to diversify their product line to maintain interest in their YA lit romance titles. They probably attract better writers who's works stand to make more money per title and prestige of being published by Harper Collins. Where as Harlequin.com is promoting still a majority of YA romance titles they are a little more diversified in their offerings. There line up seems that they are almost 50-50 between teen paranormal and teen romance literature. I think this is because Harlequin tends to appeal to serialized popular quick reads to keep their sales numbers up.
Thoughts on the article "New Adult: Needless Marketing-Speak Or Valued Subgenre?".
So the gist of this article points to what is going on within publishing where adult themes are being shoe horned into young adult literature. The traditional age range the YA lit demographic is thought to be 18 to 29. But it thrills publishers that older adults are reading this genre which puts more money in their pockets. However the backlash comes from authors who say that the traditional YA genre they want to write for is being confused and warped into PG-13 versions of Shades of Grey. The author backlash argument has some merit to it and seems to be reflected by traditional genre reading communities. This article does point out that most of the books that are increasingly becoming YA lit are just washed down romance novel from a tween's point of view. Often the protagonist in these genre's are female young adults who are coming into their own through an adventure while pursuing a romantic lead on the side. Regardless of the title (Hunger Games and Twilight) fans realize the latest gimmick that publishers are playing to get more sales. Often at literary conferences themed on traditional YA lit like comic books and sci-fi fans actively boo the presence of these titles that have a twinge bit of a their favorite fiction but rely to heavily on the romantic bit to make it engaging for them. Where as fantasy (Harry Potter for example) that has a strong detailed setting and character adventures and just a twinge romance are fully excepted into the fold of traditional literary fandom.
So while authors are the creators of the content they never truly hold all the cards. There are various methods to sell books and shaking up a genre or two where money can be made will certainly be where publishing companies will scurry too. However the reading community seems to respond to traditional genre stereotypes and keep their favorite titles close to them. This still won't stop infuriating them when Barnes & Nobles adds a Teen Paranormal Romance aisle to their sales floor because it just sells well.
Thoughts on the article "A Not-So-Young Audience for Young Adult Books":
This piece primarily comments on the feeling that older adult might feel while reading YA lit. The author of the essay reports that they primarily read YA lit for the nostalgia as the appeal and that those that are dismissive of the simplified ending are kind of missing the appeal of why older adults are picking up these titles. I would say that there is a similar feeling for the nostalgia that is created when reading something to remember what we may have felt at some point in the past. I mean it usually something that we have a simplified memory of that makes us feel comfortable in the present. Like a favorite vacation spot or a favorite meal that was served at home or at a restaurant. Just for comparison the opposite end of a continuum in relation to nostalgia would be post traumatic stress. The author made mention of this point when talking about reading books like "The fault in our Stars" which I believe is a YA romance. And most people have that previous memory of being smitten by someone else that they deeply attracted to whether it's reciprocated or not. Those nostalgic feelings can feel like they are transporting people through time in their brains to a place that feels much simpler and younger. Of course the author also mentions that books that are YA lit which don't use romantic leads or have nostalgic endings, go for a darker twist that most people avoid. Like in the Outsiders when a childhood friend of the protagonist is responsible for murdering someone. The reader can only imagine how immediately stressful trying to hide your teenage buddy from the police who just fatally stabbed a rival gang member. The dynamics of such an event would change someone for life, usually not for the better. However this classic YA lit will not get the same face time from an adult readers except those interested in catching up with books they missed as a child or have their own children who need to read from a school's summer reading list.
Week 7 - Assignment 3
Johngreenbooks.com - Blogging about your own books and catering to fandom on the same webpage is kinda neat, kinda risky, and looks exhausting all at once. Author John Green seems young enough on his website that his books connect with the generation of teens that he is writing for. His narrative is hyper kinetic in that he feels like he enjoys experiencing the adventures with his fans and the characters that he has created. As opposed to be being passive narrative where teens might feel that they are being preached to about the way they should live their lives. The latter is more successful and engaging and probably more accurate to the point of view that of teens experience that phase of their lives in passage to becoming young adults. Everything that John Green is doing is probably very relative with that fan base. That were the fan base ends too. To older readers, they usually find the stylized communication of hyper-kinetic narratives annoying. I know I do. While it is crafted sound bites, overall, it has a manic sense to it that seems impulsive with undertones of narcissism (look how witty my short form tumbler videos are). I'm not saying that this is the kind of person that John Green is personally, I am saying that the character he has to become when running his web site for fans. It's like the difference between Bruce Springsteen on stage bouncing around singing for a stadium full of fans and Bruce Springsteen who is flying coach to the next concert venue. It just sounds extinguishing to be that an author to have to write, edit, publish, and additionally appear to be super interactive with your fan base.
Stackedbooks.com - After reading their about us section on their WordPress blog I see that Stackedbook.com is written by two professional librarians blogging about materials that they work with at their job. While there's nothing new about blogging about work (Heck, that's what I'm doing here right now for these assignments, blogging for work) blogging is certainly not journalism. Blogging is usually done in addition to one time outside of work and seems to be a niche readership based on a mutual topical interest. And if someone's blog has enough readership they may be able to make some money off of ad revenue from frequent visitors gathering to a community forum or blog post.
Johngreenbooks.com - Blogging about your own books and catering to fandom on the same webpage is kinda neat, kinda risky, and looks exhausting all at once. Author John Green seems young enough on his website that his books connect with the generation of teens that he is writing for. His narrative is hyper kinetic in that he feels like he enjoys experiencing the adventures with his fans and the characters that he has created. As opposed to be being passive narrative where teens might feel that they are being preached to about the way they should live their lives. The latter is more successful and engaging and probably more accurate to the point of view that of teens experience that phase of their lives in passage to becoming young adults. Everything that John Green is doing is probably very relative with that fan base. That were the fan base ends too. To older readers, they usually find the stylized communication of hyper-kinetic narratives annoying. I know I do. While it is crafted sound bites, overall, it has a manic sense to it that seems impulsive with undertones of narcissism (look how witty my short form tumbler videos are). I'm not saying that this is the kind of person that John Green is personally, I am saying that the character he has to become when running his web site for fans. It's like the difference between Bruce Springsteen on stage bouncing around singing for a stadium full of fans and Bruce Springsteen who is flying coach to the next concert venue. It just sounds extinguishing to be that an author to have to write, edit, publish, and additionally appear to be super interactive with your fan base.
Stackedbooks.com - After reading their about us section on their WordPress blog I see that Stackedbook.com is written by two professional librarians blogging about materials that they work with at their job. While there's nothing new about blogging about work (Heck, that's what I'm doing here right now for these assignments, blogging for work) blogging is certainly not journalism. Blogging is usually done in addition to one time outside of work and seems to be a niche readership based on a mutual topical interest. And if someone's blog has enough readership they may be able to make some money off of ad revenue from frequent visitors gathering to a community forum or blog post.
So what's Stackedbooks.com topical niche in the bloggosphere? The two bloggers that run this site, Kimberly and Kelly, say that they met in grad school when working on their information studies. Between the two of them it seems from their references that they have a lot of experience in YA lit. So guess what, they tend to blog on teen oriented titles. They say on their website that they give honest reviews, which is usually code for their opinion. Also from reading a handful of their post the take away is that they have a first person narrative that has a kinda distinct voice or personality to their reviews. This is fine for those that like that kind of style. Again to keep a fan base of people to come back bloggers need to have a narrative voice in their blog that readership can identify with. And if that readership like edgy, impulsive, witty blogging I think there's plenty of that content on this site. I have to admit though it is neat that two people collaborate on the site. Usually people like to have one blogger that they only one to hear from which puts that onus of content creation for the blog on one person and that can be a lot of work sometimes. So it's cleaver that they split it up into two people so that they have some downtime from the blog and can cater to other activities occur in real life.
Week 7 - Assignment 4
While publisher's website may not be the most exciting place to decide what book may be the next one you read. It may help from time to time if you have a favorite publisher to check out what they're selling. Between the actual printing and shipping books to customers and book stores there's a lot of time also spent on promoting their products. Like sales representatives will go out with a specific theme in mind to usually sell to retail stores, website tend to have the same perspective with their visitors. While it is very easy to be dismissive about advertising as being a campaign to rally the troop around a brand. If publishers were not to promote their materials sales would most likely be dismal and the author would have to find a new publisher or just be to discouraged to ever attempt to publish again.
So looking at the teen books on Harpercollins.com and Harlequin.com there are two distinct marketing techniques. Harpercollins.com in their teen section is bee-lining straight to YA romance novels. They have a few titles that may be fantasy or paranormal teen adventures but it's almost exclusively romance of a young teen falling for the boy of her dreams. Harpercollins.com is taking a stand that they don't need to diversify their product line to maintain interest in their YA lit romance titles. They probably attract better writers who's works stand to make more money per title and prestige of being published by Harper Collins. Where as Harlequin.com is promoting still a majority of YA romance titles they are a little more diversified in their offerings. There line up seems that they are almost 50-50 between teen paranormal and teen romance literature. I think this is because Harlequin tends to appeal to serialized popular quick reads to keep their sales numbers up.
Be More Bookish - Week 6
Assignment - 1
The book genre site that I followed Tor.com has been tremendously useful but only for a handful of times. For example there is a patron comes to the branch occasionally when I'm working who appears to aimlessly be wondering among the sci-fi stacks. Though I like to read sci-fi myself I haven't read enough to know the variety of what's available among the genre. Now with knowing that a site is dedicated to the genre I don't feel powerless to ask them if they need any recommendations. If they shot a sci-fi recommendation request my way that I'm not terribly knowledgeable of. I pull out the branches I-pad and pull up Tor.com. Most patrons have never used it so I explain what the community at Tor.com has to offer and when they see the genre list most patrons become excited to see that their favorite genre has many more books than they have even heard that they can continue to explore. Using Tor.com usually takes care of 90% of the reader sci-fi recommendations requests that I've come across since having become acquainted with Tor.com.
Assignment - 3
Gaming Fiction - A book that would typify this subgenre is Ready, Player One, by Earnest Cline. This story takes place in a distopian future were everyone uses virtual reality to escape temporarily from destitute existence. There are several companies that people turn their lives over to in the VR realm however one of the most popular games reports that their company will hand over everything to a player who finds an extremely hard to find treasure in a VR labyrinth. In the spirit of Charlie and the Chocolate factory, Ready Player One does a modern twist to an entrepreneur looking for a complete stranger to become the heir to his kingdom. The protagonist we are set up with at the beginning of the story starts to take a journey into the labyrinth however will other circumstance not within his control force his hand to give up looking for the loot.
The appeal of the book ties itself firmly into the gaming culture that will eventually have mass commercialization of VR head sets themselves in late 2015 and 2016. Also this book has been turned into a screenplay and is set to be directed by Stephen Spielberg in the near future. Those interested in eventually seeing the movie may want to have a heads up with the book or have interest in reading it after viewing the film.
Gore - A book that might typify this subgenre is Spatterpunk: A Glimpse into Hell, by Wade Garrett. If you read any of the Dexter series and hated the PG descriptions when Dexter delights himself in dissecting his victims but we really never really know what we are seeing from his point of view. This book will give you that description that is wholly missing from Dexter's characterization as a sociopath to the reader. We never know why the Dark Passenger consumes them as his play thing through Dexter. However Splatterpunk sets to describe all those graphic details in as dark as a plot setting possible. If you enjoy horror, serial killers, and gore as subgenres this will be the highlights one looks for in books such as Splatterpunk: A Glimpse into Hell.
Zombies - A book that typifys this subgenre is The Walking Dead, by Robert Kirkman. One could argue the point that zombies should be in horror or gore. However the subject of zombies by themselves have become so large and wildly successful with publishers I think they are certainly deserving of their own subgenre. The Walking Dead forces readers to bond with survivors of the zombie apocalypse that appears to start in Atlanta George. However when characters begin to realize that there will be no government response they begin to turn to the dire straits they find themselves and begin to truly fight for their survival as they understand it. But don't become too attached to character, Kirkman, is known to throw very well developed characters that become reader's favorite to the chopping block to throw the plot into limbo for the reader. If you like dramatic reads, strong characters, and zombie apocalypse senerios theses are the highlights that The Walking Dead will cover in this subgenre.
Two mashup subgenres titles -
Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson - This is a strong science fiction title that quickly goes from cyberpunk VR future to an unlikely allies becoming partners to solve a who-done-it action mystery. You could call this a cyberpunk mystery. Now this is more new to the likes of America however has been a genre in Japan among Manga in the likes of Ghost in the Shell series. However Stephenson adds a more down to earth characters who are free contract agents who appeal to mob leaders who are more of town constables in this cyberpunk future. In this exchange there is a new drug called snow crash in the VR realms that hacks people's brains in reality rather than just messing up their avatars and online status. This is interfering with the local mobs rule while also destabilizing the VR realm. Who is pushing Snow Crash and what is it's ultimate purpose. Our two young heroes are about to find out.
Cosmos, by Carl Sagan - this is a nonfiction title however it serves as the beginning of an wholly overlooked need to understand present day scientific thinking as a historical construct. For example how could two mathematically advanced ancient societies that existed at the same time in different parts of the world turn out to become so different culturally. For example Aztecs societies in had a very complicated calendar tied to astrological bodies to learn when to start planting crops however they never learned to invent the wheel. Where as the Greek society had just as a deep of an understanding for calendars using astrological bodies as well. However they were able to invent the wheel, advanced weapons and ancient computers. All of this and more is contemplated from a cosmic perspective in Carl Sagan's Cosmos. This book is so well thought out that it has become the template for other subgenres that science writers have expanded into such as science as comedy with Mary Roach's book.
The book genre site that I followed Tor.com has been tremendously useful but only for a handful of times. For example there is a patron comes to the branch occasionally when I'm working who appears to aimlessly be wondering among the sci-fi stacks. Though I like to read sci-fi myself I haven't read enough to know the variety of what's available among the genre. Now with knowing that a site is dedicated to the genre I don't feel powerless to ask them if they need any recommendations. If they shot a sci-fi recommendation request my way that I'm not terribly knowledgeable of. I pull out the branches I-pad and pull up Tor.com. Most patrons have never used it so I explain what the community at Tor.com has to offer and when they see the genre list most patrons become excited to see that their favorite genre has many more books than they have even heard that they can continue to explore. Using Tor.com usually takes care of 90% of the reader sci-fi recommendations requests that I've come across since having become acquainted with Tor.com.
Assignment - 3
Gaming Fiction - A book that would typify this subgenre is Ready, Player One, by Earnest Cline. This story takes place in a distopian future were everyone uses virtual reality to escape temporarily from destitute existence. There are several companies that people turn their lives over to in the VR realm however one of the most popular games reports that their company will hand over everything to a player who finds an extremely hard to find treasure in a VR labyrinth. In the spirit of Charlie and the Chocolate factory, Ready Player One does a modern twist to an entrepreneur looking for a complete stranger to become the heir to his kingdom. The protagonist we are set up with at the beginning of the story starts to take a journey into the labyrinth however will other circumstance not within his control force his hand to give up looking for the loot.
The appeal of the book ties itself firmly into the gaming culture that will eventually have mass commercialization of VR head sets themselves in late 2015 and 2016. Also this book has been turned into a screenplay and is set to be directed by Stephen Spielberg in the near future. Those interested in eventually seeing the movie may want to have a heads up with the book or have interest in reading it after viewing the film.
Gore - A book that might typify this subgenre is Spatterpunk: A Glimpse into Hell, by Wade Garrett. If you read any of the Dexter series and hated the PG descriptions when Dexter delights himself in dissecting his victims but we really never really know what we are seeing from his point of view. This book will give you that description that is wholly missing from Dexter's characterization as a sociopath to the reader. We never know why the Dark Passenger consumes them as his play thing through Dexter. However Splatterpunk sets to describe all those graphic details in as dark as a plot setting possible. If you enjoy horror, serial killers, and gore as subgenres this will be the highlights one looks for in books such as Splatterpunk: A Glimpse into Hell.
Zombies - A book that typifys this subgenre is The Walking Dead, by Robert Kirkman. One could argue the point that zombies should be in horror or gore. However the subject of zombies by themselves have become so large and wildly successful with publishers I think they are certainly deserving of their own subgenre. The Walking Dead forces readers to bond with survivors of the zombie apocalypse that appears to start in Atlanta George. However when characters begin to realize that there will be no government response they begin to turn to the dire straits they find themselves and begin to truly fight for their survival as they understand it. But don't become too attached to character, Kirkman, is known to throw very well developed characters that become reader's favorite to the chopping block to throw the plot into limbo for the reader. If you like dramatic reads, strong characters, and zombie apocalypse senerios theses are the highlights that The Walking Dead will cover in this subgenre.
Two mashup subgenres titles -
Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson - This is a strong science fiction title that quickly goes from cyberpunk VR future to an unlikely allies becoming partners to solve a who-done-it action mystery. You could call this a cyberpunk mystery. Now this is more new to the likes of America however has been a genre in Japan among Manga in the likes of Ghost in the Shell series. However Stephenson adds a more down to earth characters who are free contract agents who appeal to mob leaders who are more of town constables in this cyberpunk future. In this exchange there is a new drug called snow crash in the VR realms that hacks people's brains in reality rather than just messing up their avatars and online status. This is interfering with the local mobs rule while also destabilizing the VR realm. Who is pushing Snow Crash and what is it's ultimate purpose. Our two young heroes are about to find out.
Cosmos, by Carl Sagan - this is a nonfiction title however it serves as the beginning of an wholly overlooked need to understand present day scientific thinking as a historical construct. For example how could two mathematically advanced ancient societies that existed at the same time in different parts of the world turn out to become so different culturally. For example Aztecs societies in had a very complicated calendar tied to astrological bodies to learn when to start planting crops however they never learned to invent the wheel. Where as the Greek society had just as a deep of an understanding for calendars using astrological bodies as well. However they were able to invent the wheel, advanced weapons and ancient computers. All of this and more is contemplated from a cosmic perspective in Carl Sagan's Cosmos. This book is so well thought out that it has become the template for other subgenres that science writers have expanded into such as science as comedy with Mary Roach's book.
Wednesday, August 26, 2015
Be More Bookish - Week 5
Assignment 1:
For this week we have been instructed to blog about the web resource that we mentioned within the first's assignment of Be More Bookish. However I'm going to to have to pedal backwards and explain why I'm not going to be reporting on any of those. Firstly, when I started blogging for be more bookish I wanted to seek out some other media avenues that weren't mentioned by the advice of the training assignments. And while I would like to say that the three that I mentioned as online resources Earlyword, GoodReads, and NPRBooks have been helpful. I haven't spent anytime on either of those three much at all (aside from the Goodreads site). Instead at various times I've been visiting the Books subreddit at https://www.reddit.com/r/books/. Wow and what a dynamic place it is. It has all the pros of the reddit community (along with all of it's misses).
If you don't already know r/books (reddit lingo for their subreddit forums) was recently revamped. Though it still features it regular Reddit forums, r/books has become a hub of sorts to seek out all things book related it's moderators want to draw attention to. For example within the first week of reopening r/books sponsored an Ask Me Anything (AMA) discussion with Ernest Cline, who wrote Ready Player One, which is becoming a major motion picture. It was pretty cool reading what the author's currently working on and his responses to questions that he had time to answer. Due to Reddit's comments voting system most of the popular responses are already waiting for people to read at the top of the screen of that AMA.
What makes the r/books so facinating is that it's forums are trending to what's the most popular topic at the moment with the community structuring it by voting on the threads in the forum. Things that the forum moderator wants to bring to user's attention are posted at the top of the page, usually items like book discussion that are going to take place in the near future, weekly recommendation threads, and "what are you reading" weekly forum. Other than those few topics the rest of the structure is determined by the voting system of the community and a few community rules. Now I understand how vastly different r/books is than say EarlyWord and Goodreads which are structured to an overreaching coherent theme. That kinda structure makes those website really useful for reference material. However you just won't see as a socially dynamic user base as what you'll get in just even a few minutes spent at r/books. I highly recommend it.
Assignment 2:
So right now the hot titles at our library are new adult fiction and teens who waited to the last minute to complete their school's summer reading lists.
So what is there to like about early word and our hot items at our library branch. First the patrons that want the new hot titles are usually walking around with lists of books. They usually have it scrawled onto a loose sheet of paper, sometimes they try to memorize the book or name of the author. Sometimes they just bring along the entire article that they saw the name of the title that interested them in the first place. It doesn't really matter what they are using to remember what titles they are looking for it usually has originated from a best seller's list usually from the newspaper. These lists are haunt us because it seems a third of patrons usually try to memorize what they thought they were interested in but can no longer remember what it was they wanted. This is were EarlyWord.com has us covered. They have links to what seems like is most of the major bestsellers lists links in one nice column such as New York Times, USA Today, NPR, etc. This is a great tool to use to jump start someone's memory and ultimately saves time to keep them from stammering through their self-dialogue of having to try to remember what they wanted.
EarlyWord also features hold alerts. This is a nice feature that takes the burden of proof off of the librarian for the person that wants to take home that new book from Janet Evanovich "...but the branch must not have anticipated enough copies for everyone?" you know who I mean. So to spare insulting the patrons' intelligence to explain that there's a concept in capitalism called supply and demand and that sometimes publishers cannot always anticipate how popular something will be. We have hold alerts to use as a soft sell of sorts to explain gently that while "...we're glad you want the latest Janet Evanovich novel, there also seems to be a lot of other people waiting for it as well according to hold alerts from publishing reports. Our supply is on order for 200 copies at all branches, would you like us to place you in the hold que for that title?" If they still don't believe you show them the screen for the hold alert from EarlyWord. Doubly, print it out so they have something to take along home while they wait. Those kinda people tend to like trophies, certificates and rain checks.
For the kids that waited to long to read their school's summer reading list. I'm sorry they are just not going to get it done in time. However instead of their parents becoming steamed saying they are going to have to purchase the book from Barnes and Nobles, we could offer them EarlyWord's feature movies based on books links. If they didn't read Les Miserable for that AP english class during the summer guess what. There's a movie they can watch in few short hours to make up for it. Need to read Life of Pi, guess what EarlyWord has that title linked as a movie tie-in as well. Well this last Paragraph is a little are sarcastic, but the point is that a lot of people like to read the book a movie coming out is based on. And for a short time period that book that was ignored on the shelf for a while will become super popular for a bit. If you can use this tool to give patrons a glimps at what titles will soon be in short supply because of movie releases because they wanted to read it too, you will look like superstar librarian to those patrons.
Assignment 3:
Brothers can have strong words to share with each other which sometimes escalate into rivalries. Sometimes those rivalries soothe over and other times they continue as festering resentment into adulthood. As old as Cain and Able, sibling conflicts need no introduction and are fantastically explosive. However what occurs when one brother tragically passes away before a hatchet can be buried by the other. The brother that witnessed the car accident while unscathed feels and unexpected hollowness. What memories will prevail that form the narrative a surviving family has in remembering their loved one? In grieving will they move on or will the surviving child start seeing flaws in their aging parents that could have precipitated an unnecessary brotherhood feud?
For this week we have been instructed to blog about the web resource that we mentioned within the first's assignment of Be More Bookish. However I'm going to to have to pedal backwards and explain why I'm not going to be reporting on any of those. Firstly, when I started blogging for be more bookish I wanted to seek out some other media avenues that weren't mentioned by the advice of the training assignments. And while I would like to say that the three that I mentioned as online resources Earlyword, GoodReads, and NPRBooks have been helpful. I haven't spent anytime on either of those three much at all (aside from the Goodreads site). Instead at various times I've been visiting the Books subreddit at https://www.reddit.com/r/books/. Wow and what a dynamic place it is. It has all the pros of the reddit community (along with all of it's misses).
If you don't already know r/books (reddit lingo for their subreddit forums) was recently revamped. Though it still features it regular Reddit forums, r/books has become a hub of sorts to seek out all things book related it's moderators want to draw attention to. For example within the first week of reopening r/books sponsored an Ask Me Anything (AMA) discussion with Ernest Cline, who wrote Ready Player One, which is becoming a major motion picture. It was pretty cool reading what the author's currently working on and his responses to questions that he had time to answer. Due to Reddit's comments voting system most of the popular responses are already waiting for people to read at the top of the screen of that AMA.
What makes the r/books so facinating is that it's forums are trending to what's the most popular topic at the moment with the community structuring it by voting on the threads in the forum. Things that the forum moderator wants to bring to user's attention are posted at the top of the page, usually items like book discussion that are going to take place in the near future, weekly recommendation threads, and "what are you reading" weekly forum. Other than those few topics the rest of the structure is determined by the voting system of the community and a few community rules. Now I understand how vastly different r/books is than say EarlyWord and Goodreads which are structured to an overreaching coherent theme. That kinda structure makes those website really useful for reference material. However you just won't see as a socially dynamic user base as what you'll get in just even a few minutes spent at r/books. I highly recommend it.
Assignment 2:
So right now the hot titles at our library are new adult fiction and teens who waited to the last minute to complete their school's summer reading lists.
So what is there to like about early word and our hot items at our library branch. First the patrons that want the new hot titles are usually walking around with lists of books. They usually have it scrawled onto a loose sheet of paper, sometimes they try to memorize the book or name of the author. Sometimes they just bring along the entire article that they saw the name of the title that interested them in the first place. It doesn't really matter what they are using to remember what titles they are looking for it usually has originated from a best seller's list usually from the newspaper. These lists are haunt us because it seems a third of patrons usually try to memorize what they thought they were interested in but can no longer remember what it was they wanted. This is were EarlyWord.com has us covered. They have links to what seems like is most of the major bestsellers lists links in one nice column such as New York Times, USA Today, NPR, etc. This is a great tool to use to jump start someone's memory and ultimately saves time to keep them from stammering through their self-dialogue of having to try to remember what they wanted.
EarlyWord also features hold alerts. This is a nice feature that takes the burden of proof off of the librarian for the person that wants to take home that new book from Janet Evanovich "...but the branch must not have anticipated enough copies for everyone?" you know who I mean. So to spare insulting the patrons' intelligence to explain that there's a concept in capitalism called supply and demand and that sometimes publishers cannot always anticipate how popular something will be. We have hold alerts to use as a soft sell of sorts to explain gently that while "...we're glad you want the latest Janet Evanovich novel, there also seems to be a lot of other people waiting for it as well according to hold alerts from publishing reports. Our supply is on order for 200 copies at all branches, would you like us to place you in the hold que for that title?" If they still don't believe you show them the screen for the hold alert from EarlyWord. Doubly, print it out so they have something to take along home while they wait. Those kinda people tend to like trophies, certificates and rain checks.
For the kids that waited to long to read their school's summer reading list. I'm sorry they are just not going to get it done in time. However instead of their parents becoming steamed saying they are going to have to purchase the book from Barnes and Nobles, we could offer them EarlyWord's feature movies based on books links. If they didn't read Les Miserable for that AP english class during the summer guess what. There's a movie they can watch in few short hours to make up for it. Need to read Life of Pi, guess what EarlyWord has that title linked as a movie tie-in as well. Well this last Paragraph is a little are sarcastic, but the point is that a lot of people like to read the book a movie coming out is based on. And for a short time period that book that was ignored on the shelf for a while will become super popular for a bit. If you can use this tool to give patrons a glimps at what titles will soon be in short supply because of movie releases because they wanted to read it too, you will look like superstar librarian to those patrons.
Assignment 3:
Brothers can have strong words to share with each other which sometimes escalate into rivalries. Sometimes those rivalries soothe over and other times they continue as festering resentment into adulthood. As old as Cain and Able, sibling conflicts need no introduction and are fantastically explosive. However what occurs when one brother tragically passes away before a hatchet can be buried by the other. The brother that witnessed the car accident while unscathed feels and unexpected hollowness. What memories will prevail that form the narrative a surviving family has in remembering their loved one? In grieving will they move on or will the surviving child start seeing flaws in their aging parents that could have precipitated an unnecessary brotherhood feud?
Tuesday, August 25, 2015
Be More Bookish - Week 4
In my opinion, the strongest feature of the large book reading community at Goodreads are the book reviews and friends’ book lists. There are other places on the Internet where one may find a large offering of book reviews, like Amazon. However it's really easy to become distracted in those websites due to advertising and products. So it's nice to have a website like Goodreads for its singular purpose to cultivate a book reading community.
Goodreads' meat and potatoes is centered around readers interacting with each other similarly to way people do on Facebook. In fact, to me, the user interface at Goodreads looks very much like Facebook. And like Facebook, Goodreads initially makes all privacy settings turned off by default to get new accounts to start sharing books lists right away (I would highly recommend turning privacy settings on when you get around to it). You get started pretty quickly and find out what other Goodread users thought of a title. The Goodreads community seems pretty straightforward in their book reviews. If a title delighted them they'll probably recommend it was worth reading. If a title deterred them they will often mention that they wouldn’t recommend it and why. As a highlighted feature of the website readers also share their books lists. Finally the socialization side of Goodreads encourages initiating friend requests, it's interesting to see what other friends have read in the past. Friends can send each other recommendations of titles one may not have considered before or what they may want to consider reading in the future.
On the other side of that same issues Goodreads offers automated book recommendations that come from the site (not the reading community) and while it's interesting the recommendations are not great from my experience. The site generated book recommendations usually at stays within the genre of other books one already read. But the recommendations don’t really appeal to me more than the genre type. From my understanding, the automated book recommendations are compiled from an algorithm that computes the chance of someone’s interest level from their account's metadata, personal information, and who knows whatever information Goodreads monitors from account activity (probably information that the readers themselves may not be aware is collected on them). While this approach is economical for running a website, the algorithm only infers recommendations from someone's list of things they may have liked in the past. It's more effective for a human to give another person a book recommendation. Humans communicate in real-time and any ambiguities about what a person wants in the moment are clearer. For example I consider myself to be a sci-fi fan and I have my particular favorite reads. I tend to read Carl Sagan and Arthur C. Clarke type stuff. From knowing that in a conversation a person might recommend to me to check out Stephen Baxter, who writes in a similar scope as the two previous authors. The first Goodreads recommendation to me after I entered in my previously read book list was, Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. Uhh...no thanks? The nice thing that since Goodreads is just a website, it can never balk at one's indecisiveness to its crappy recommendations.
All in all, I think that the Goodreads website is a good tool to keep in the shed. It's nice to access their genre lists and book reviews. However like all tools that are multifaceted: Goodreads is only good for really one or two things and after that, you'll never use the rest of it's features.
On the other side of that same issues Goodreads offers automated book recommendations that come from the site (not the reading community) and while it's interesting the recommendations are not great from my experience. The site generated book recommendations usually at stays within the genre of other books one already read. But the recommendations don’t really appeal to me more than the genre type. From my understanding, the automated book recommendations are compiled from an algorithm that computes the chance of someone’s interest level from their account's metadata, personal information, and who knows whatever information Goodreads monitors from account activity (probably information that the readers themselves may not be aware is collected on them). While this approach is economical for running a website, the algorithm only infers recommendations from someone's list of things they may have liked in the past. It's more effective for a human to give another person a book recommendation. Humans communicate in real-time and any ambiguities about what a person wants in the moment are clearer. For example I consider myself to be a sci-fi fan and I have my particular favorite reads. I tend to read Carl Sagan and Arthur C. Clarke type stuff. From knowing that in a conversation a person might recommend to me to check out Stephen Baxter, who writes in a similar scope as the two previous authors. The first Goodreads recommendation to me after I entered in my previously read book list was, Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. Uhh...no thanks? The nice thing that since Goodreads is just a website, it can never balk at one's indecisiveness to its crappy recommendations.
All in all, I think that the Goodreads website is a good tool to keep in the shed. It's nice to access their genre lists and book reviews. However like all tools that are multifaceted: Goodreads is only good for really one or two things and after that, you'll never use the rest of it's features.
Saturday, July 18, 2015
Be More Bookish - Week 3 Assignment 1, 2 & 3
Conversation 1
Librarian: Hi, is there anything I can suggest?
Customer: I’m looking for a good story, you know, something that draws me in. But I don’t know where to start looking.
Librarian: What was the last book you read? Could you share something you liked about it?
Customer: The last book I read was Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. Everyone is reading it so I had to pick it up. It was lovely. She is such an interesting woman and so brave. I enjoyed the descriptions of the countries she went to and what she did while she was there, of course, but I think what I liked most was how she shared her inner thoughts — so reflective but funny too. I thought it might be just light fluff or all me, me, me, me, but it was so much more than that. I read all the Oprah books and just love them. Anyway I wanted to ask you for a few suggestions for my book group. It’s my turn to pick the title.
Librarian: Hi, is there anything I can suggest?
Customer: I’m looking for a good story, you know, something that draws me in. But I don’t know where to start looking.
Librarian: What was the last book you read? Could you share something you liked about it?
Customer: The last book I read was Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. Everyone is reading it so I had to pick it up. It was lovely. She is such an interesting woman and so brave. I enjoyed the descriptions of the countries she went to and what she did while she was there, of course, but I think what I liked most was how she shared her inner thoughts — so reflective but funny too. I thought it might be just light fluff or all me, me, me, me, but it was so much more than that. I read all the Oprah books and just love them. Anyway I wanted to ask you for a few suggestions for my book group. It’s my turn to pick the title.
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