Thursday, April 2, 2009

Why Chick Lit? - The Daily Beast

It turns out the corner of the library known as “Chick lit” is wildly popular for a reason. A new UK study has found that reading falls along gender lines: about 50 percent of women are “page-turners,” compared to only 26 percent of men. And of those men

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The article goes on to say that chick lit is so popular that if women suddenly stopped reading it that the novel would die! Kudos for an often poo-poo'ed genre.
My two cents - we will never lose print. Parents introduce their children to a world of literature through the picture book. As long as children are exposed to print and enjoy it while young we will always have print.

Friday, March 13, 2009

10 Websites for Book Lovers

Since discovering LibraryThing, Good Reads and Shelfari I have come across the following blog post. It lists 10 Websites for Book Lovers. Some are pretty cool!

http://oedb.org/blogs/ilibrarian/2009/10-websites-for-book-lovers/

Wish I knew how to turn the url into a nicer link that just had the name of the post and not all the messy url stuff. Help? Anyone?

Monday, March 9, 2009

Thing - LibraryThing

Since an earlier post described my reasons for staying with Good Reads (very similiar to LibraryThing) I won't bore you with it again.

Here is the link to my LibraryThing account
http://www.librarything.com/home/cathiesue

Couple of things were really cool...the book giveaway thing. But, not enough children's, ya, tweens or GN's to attract me to sign up for the lottery give-away.

Also the Librarians group...kinda cool. Although from the posts there is more non-book posting than book posting...I guess you can post about books and reading anywhere but who else is THAT interested in METADATA!

Alternatively, I can be found at
http://www.goodreads.com/cathiesue

Enjoy!

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

The Rise and Fall of Shiny New Technology

Maybe you noticed my Shiny New Shelfari is gone (sorry Amy P, it was cool while it lasted). After I opened the account and began devising lists and shared my shelf with The World, ok, just you guys, I realized the process seemed vaguely familiar.

Der...I had done all of this before on Good Reads. GR does have a widget, as you can see, that adds covers. It also lets you create custom Shelves. Mine were/are Professional Reading and Sequoyah. I'm sure I'll add more.

So, since I had already devoted a lot of time an effort to my GR account I decided to go back with them. Besides, my RBF is on GR so somehow when we send each other notifications about what we are reading it almost feels like we're connected. :(

So, I haven't played with Library Thing yet...but soon. See that's the thing about 23 Things...it takes time.

Friday, February 20, 2009

What I'm Reading Next

I love my Shelfari List. I haven't tweaked it enough. Right now it shows just what I'm currently reading. However, my bedside table is littered with books -

The Maze of Bones by Rick Riordan and One False Note by Gordon Korman...both from the popular juvenile series The 39 Clues.

Scarpetta by Patricia Cornwell.

The Devil in the White City : Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson. (srsly...have started this one three times, guess I need to give up)

Return to Sender by Julia Alverez

The Girl Who could Fly by Victoria Forester.

Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead. A YA Vampire Romance...no, I did not love Twilight.

Holy Smokes by Katie MacAlister. Mostly supernatural beings and dog who doubles a demon from Hell.

Sunshine by Robin McKinley. Still more Vampires, but with better dialog.

Anyway, that's what I'm doing with my weekend!

The RSS Adventure

The RSS Adventure was rather anti-climactic. Long ago, perhaps even in a galaxy far, far away, I created a Google Reader Account. Whereupon I subscribed madly to items of interest and then promptly abandoned the project (or perhaps fled screaming from the room due to information overload).

I do like the idea that the information is pushed to me as opposed to me going out there and pulling it.

I rediscovered the Google Reader account and trimmed it to a manageable 3 feeds that I am really truly interested in.

Bloglines seems much easier and friendlier to use. The easiest part is adding the feeds. I found it very simple to cut and paste the URL as needed. I have 3 here as well. Although I will have to remember to visit Bloglines after 23 Things is done. That would be the hard part.

I guess it is redundent to have both. Maybe when Shona gets us all upgraded to Office 2007 I can learn how to use outlook to feed my feeds habit!

Friday, February 13, 2009

The Dangerous Days of Daniel X by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge

Just finished this one. We know James Patterson can write a page-turner and with the help of Michael Ledwidge he scores again in this fast-paced novel for young adults (or lovers of YA Lit!)
At first it may all seem very standard. Hero loses his family, takes a journey, finds people who help or hinder him, all seems lost, heroic efforts etc...etc.

In this instance the Hero is an alien, actually an Alien Hunter. Daniel has taken over the work of his parents and has begun hunting aliens that plague good old Terra Firma. He gets pretty good at it. He works from The List his parents left him. But the smaller the number on the list the worse the alien monster is! #6 nearly does him in!

Also, Daniel has several "special" abilities that assist him. He's strong, he's smart and his super special talent is that he can "create". Read the book for more on that!

But, the writing is so very over the top! It seems like Daniel recognizes that story is bizarre and outlandish and he goes along with the joke, like he's in on it and is being a good sport.

Anyway...this is way more science fiction than fantasy. It will appeal to those who liked the Maximum Ride series and it also reminded me a little of Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card.
If you read it let me know what you think.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

I’ll stick with print

I love the newspaper. I read it every morning at home. We had an evening edition when I was very young and it was usually a fight to see which one of us kids could bring the newspaper to daddy. He would be relaxing in his recliner, freshly showered and shaved, after a hard day as an oilfield mechanic. The winner, bearing the newspaper prize, would be the one to climb up and sit on the chair arm when it was time to share the comic section. Good times.

So why am I musing about print when the topic is anything about technology? Just this morning in my freshly printed and pressed newspaper I discovered a special section devoted to the online version of the paper. I took some time this morning to look around at some of the new features, bells and whistles at http://www.tulsaworld.com/

The page loads faster. Thanks to some super-duty site optimization! A good thing. It’s re-organized, it takes fewer clicks to get around the content. And there’s more content. More articles, videos, graphics, music…etc.

The reporters are all blogging, (or to borrow a carefully-crafted turn of phrase from Carole Gilliland) they blah, blah, blahg. You can have breaking news sent to your email. You can create a free online account and set-up a profile just as you would on any other social networking site. You can comment on any article, vote in online polls and embed their videos on your website or blog.

But, I already engage in most of the technologies that I have time for. This is not one that I'm willing to sacrifice anything else for. I’m just not that into it. I’ll stick with print.

Friday, February 6, 2009

Picasa! Picasa!

I've used Flickr once or twice before. The wallpaper on my computer right now is a photo from Flickr. I found it easy to use. Picasa was easy to navigate as well. I'm not too interested in people photos. I like quirky landscapes, animals, art, and maybe babies if they are uber cute or whimsical.

I like this one because it reveals an unusual landscape for Hawaii; A view you might not normally expect to see. Yes, I think that is a horse in the picture. Ah...just a country girl at heart.
http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/view?feat=tags&psc=G&filter=1&tags=hawaii#5262664164331408050

This tags were simply 5, 6, day and Hawaii.
My 2 (technology) cents.

Monday, February 2, 2009

Things Thoughts 1-4

Introduction - Good
Directions - Good
Lifelong Learning - Good

Easiest of the habits for me is #1. Goal setting for me is automatic and has become the best way for me to accomplish almost anything. By creating a vision of the end product I can look at the steps to get there. Having "the end in mind" ensure that I don't lose my way or get off-topic.

Hardest - using technology to my advantage. I'm amazed at the amount of really awesome do-dads, gadgets, gizmos and widgets available. However, if it is not truly useful to me and easily used or accessed by others, I'm not sure I'll embrace it.

Case in point - blogs. Since I've set up and maintained a blog before this one was pretty easy. The blog, now deleted, was a place to share information regarding activities around the Centennial last year. It's intended audience, school librarians, were never able to access the blog due to filters and restrictions. So instead of being a good tool for communication it was an exercise in frustration.

I'm done for now. Warning! Posts with book titles in them will be book musings not things thoughts. Just so you know......

Friday, January 30, 2009

My Alter Ego

I created Mickey Lemon using the name of my first pet and my favorite flavor of dessert. It's really just me...Cathie Sue.