Happy Birthday, Fёdor Mihajlovič Dosto’evskij!

Today is the birthday of the great Russian novelist Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevsky (1821-1881). If Dostoevsky’s big books have been on your “classics-to-read” back burner for awhile, make today the day you finally pick one up.
Though I started reading Dostoevsky with Crime and Punishment, you might prefer reading The Idiot or Notes from Underground first. Or, maybe you’ll want to start with the [...]

Harrowing Halloween Horror

We’ve recently added some great new books to our horror collection, just in time for Halloween!  Check them out:
Frostbite: A Werewolf Tale by David Wellington – Since vampires are currently everyone’s favorite creature of the night (thanks a lot, Stephenie Meyer), we don’t see many books about werewolves these days. Fortunately, Frostbite fills in the gaps pretty well [...]

Praising Melancholy With Depressing Books

I recently stumbled upon a new book by Eric G. Wilson called Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy and thought, “Ok, here’s a guy who gets it.” Wilson’s treatise argues that some folks are simply born a little sadder than others, and that there’s nothing wrong with that.
This is a refreshing take on the matter for us melancholy types, who [...]

Back to school, sort of

Wes’s previous post about literary autodidacts really struck a chord with me. While a formal education can open doors, there comes a point in one’s life beyond which going back to school becomes either financially or logically prohibitive.  There’s only so much student loan debt that fits into a librarian’s budget, after all.  And honestly: [...]

My First Beach Reads

I usually prefer to vacation in New England in the dead of winter, but recently I decided to give the beach a try, and even did what summer-loving folks call “beach reading,” although most of it was done on a screened-in porch, because, thankfully, it rained much of the time I was there. Here are some books [...]

Fictional Reference Books for Most Library Collections

Ever wish you could add fictional reference books to your library’s reference collection? If I could, this is what I would add:
The Encyclopedia Galactica — What self-respecting librarian wouldn’t want access to Isaac Asimov’s immense encyclopedia containing all the knowledge of futuristic civilizations?
Handbook for the Recently Deceased — Libraries shouldn’t discriminate against the deceased, so [...]

Greetings From Roboburgh

Pittsburgh, once a city of soot and steel mills, is now a city of transistors and automatons, a virtual “Silicon Valley of droid design.”
Indeed, within the last several decades Pittsburgh’s numerous knowledge institutions and industries have made the city a central player in the world of robotics. The Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute, for instance, is the world’s premier institution for robotics research and training. Recently, the [...]

Literary Autodidacts and Public Libraries

You may have recently come across a New York Times article about Ray Bradbury, his love of libraries, and his fight to keep California’s public libraries open. There’s a great quote from Bradbury in that article that I’ve read over and over again:
“Libraries raised me,” Mr. Bradbury said. “I don’t believe in colleges and universities. I believe in [...]

Ok, I Get It

It’s taken me awhile to hop on the graphic novel craze, but after recently reading a few excellent ones I think I finally get what it’s all about. Here are the books that got me hooked:
All-Star Superman
I wasn’t much of a Superman fan until I read this. It’s a fresh take on the classic Superman story with some pretty heavy duty science fiction [...]

Bonsai

I’ve recently become quite interested in the art of growing miniature trees in trays, otherwise known as bonsai. After acquiring my first specimen, a little juniper tree, I decided I’d better do some reading to learn how to make my new friend thrive. The big thing I’ve learned so far is this: Bonsai is not [...]