Librarians do Gaga

A Twitter friend sent me the link to this video, and I absolutely loved it. You gotta love librarians. Truly. We're wonderful people.

Book update

I figured that I should use this space to update the books I've read. As I think shows in my sidebar, I make note of them in Goodreads, but I could put a little commentary here.

I read the latest in the Black Dagger Brotherhood series, Lover Mine, last week, and it was wonderful. It was about John Matthew, with a healthy dose of Qhuinn and Blay (who collectively broke my heart). We also got the backstory on Xhex, who is much older than I'd thought. Terrific, though. The book had the same tough sexiness of the other books in the series. My quibbles were her overuse of some of the slang, such as "getting verticle" and derivations thereof. Once or twice was fine; after that she could have just said that people sat up.

I also read Water for Elephants.  I may have been the last person in the country to read this. It was fantastic. It's being made into a movie, with Rob Pattinson playing young Jacob and Reese Witherspoon as Marlena.  Hal Holbrook will play old Jacob.

The last book club book I read was The Blue Girl, which was an urban fantasy book, and I really enjoyed it. It was about a girl who befriends a ghost boy and has to fend off a bunch of fairies.

I had to flounce on the last book club book, Under the Sabers, because it was so bad. I just couldn't get past the first few chapters. I guess books about army wives just aren't for me. I ended up being sick on the discussion day, anyway, so it must have been a cosmic sort of thing.

This month's selection is The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane. I'm listening to the audiobook version. I'm about half way through it, and I'm loving it so far.

Update: June 2, 2010:

I finished Deliverance Dane a while ago, I just forgot to update here. It turns out that I continued loving the book, though that sentiment wasn't shared by my book group colleagues, interestingly. I thought it was a nice, fun story that went back and forth from the 1990s to the late 17th/early 18th centuries. Others in the book group thought that it was lacking in scholarship and dumbed down for the reader. But, that's what makes for a good book group discussion. It's a boring book group in which everyone agrees. 

Moral Disorder by Margaret Atwood

I just finished this book for the University Libraries book club. I can't say that I liked it. I didn't like the disjointedness of it. I think it was the "an other stories" part of it that bothered me. For the most part it was the story of one woman and her life, with its trials and tribulations (and a lot of both). Then the last few chapters were where the "other stories" came in, completely without any warning that they were the other stories, that we were no longer hearing about protagonist of the other 80% of the book. So I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out where this fit with the rest of the book, only to realize that it really didn't fit at all. Kind of frustrating.


This is the first Margaret Atwood book I've read, and I can't say that it was a good introduction to her work. I'm not sure that I'd want to read any more by her, based on this book. I found it very frustrating, and I had to force myself to read it. Never a good sign.

Managing my time

I've been bitching and moaning for months about how I don't have enough time to do everything I need to do. Projects, reading, operations stuff..... It felt like I was constantly busy, but nothing was getting done. When having Valentine's dinner with Russ, and complaining some more, I said the magic words: "I control my own schedule." Meaning my boss isn't managing my time; he just expects that I will get stuff done. So, after that epiphany, I realized that, hey, maybe I could do a better job of organizing my time.

After so many years of working, I've come to know about myself that I don't get into productive, let's-get-this-done mode until after lunch. So, I've scheduled my mornings (when I don't have meetings) to by my reading time. That's reading professional journals, websites, blogs, and books that I need to keep up with what's going on, and maybe (hopefully) learn something new.

The afternoons will be spent working on projects. Monday mornings will be my time to schedule specific things for the week, slotting each into an appropriate afternoon time slot. I think that part of my problem before was feeling overwhelmed by everything that needed to be done, and not having a handle on what exactly that was. So it just all seemed completely overwhelming. So, I've figured out what exactly needs to be done for each project. Yeah, yeah, that's Project Management 101. I'd just forgotten the basics.

Vacations

I went on vacation with my sister last week to Charlotte, NC. When we got there on 2/4, it was pretty cold -- about 34 degrees. By Saturday, it was 75. It was so nice to be outside without a coat. I visited the Daniel Stowe Botanical Gardens on Saturday, and saw some crocuses and daffodils, in addition to their orchid exhibit.

We had some good food, fun window shopping at stores we can in no way afford, and lots of relaxation (massages, pedicures, movies in our room while munching pizza). I also visited Trader Joe's for the first time, and it was FANTASTIC! Can we have one here? Please? (According to BuffaloPundit, there might be one on Maple in Amherst if Benderson ever gets the go-ahead to build the development they have planned.)

Now I'm home, and that's good too. I think that every parent should be allowed a few days away from their spouse/kids at least once a year. It brings you back refreshed and ready to be a contributing member of the family.