I just finished my first semester of library school and I’d like to think that this is the only reason I haven’t written. Like I always say: I haven’t stopped reading! Since I have my Christmas reading lined up (literally on a shelf), I would like to take some time to look over what I’ve read this year. It is important to remember that I have had a lot of changes in my life this year, and I think my erratic reading behavior reflects these changes. In the course of one year: I have graduated from college, moved to New Jersey, and started library school. I have had 3 jobs this year also, which should make taxes fun! 

As always, I have had many plans for reading and not always the time or resources to complete these plans. It’s fun to look back and see what I was planning and what I actually accomplished. 

1) The New Life by: Orhan Pamuk. 

2) Other Colors by: Orhan Pamuk.

3) And Now You Can Go by: Vendela Vida

4) Varieties of Disturbances by: Lydia Davis

5) Sleepless Nights by: Elizabeth Hardwick

6) Case Histories by: Kate Atkinson

7) Swann in Love by: Marcel Proust

The World to Come by: Dara Horn

9) Petropolis by: Anya Ulinich

10) How Proust can Change Your Life by: Alain de Botton

11) Gilgamesh

12) The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by: Michael Chabon

13) Persepolis by: Marjane Satrapi

14) The Unbearable Lightness of Being by: Milan Kundera

15) In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower by: Marcel Proust

16) The White Castle by: Orhan Pamuk

17) The Brief Wonderful Life of Oscar Wao by: Junot Diaz

18) The Odyssey by: Homer

19) Everything Passes by: Gabriel Josipovici

20) The Guermantes Way by: Marcel Proust

21) Indian Killer by: Sherman Alexie

22) Mrs. Dalloway by: Virginia Woolf

23) A Defense of Ardor by: Adam Zagajewski

24) Goldberg: Variations by: Gabriel Josipovici

25) Signed, Mata Hari by: Yannick Murphy

26) Eat, Pray, Love by: Elizabeth Gilbert

27) Mysteries of Pittsburgh by: Michael Chabon

28) The Lusiads by: Vaz de Cameos

29) Omeros by: Derek Walcott

30) Possession by: A.S. Byatt

31) Free Food for Millionaires by: Min Jin Lee

32) Drown by: Junot Diaz

33) The Din in the Head by: Cynthia Ozick

34) Persepolis 2 by: Marjane Sartapi

35) The Captive and the Fugitive by: Marcel Proust

36) Wonder Boys by: Michael Chabon

37) A Model World and Other Stories by: Michael Chabon

38) Oh Pure and Radiant Heart by: Lydia Millet

39) Ignorance by: Milan Kundera

40) Werewolves in their Youth by: Michael Chabon

41) Here is New York by: E.B. White

42) Slowness by: Milan Kundera

43) No One Belongs Here More than You by: Miranda July

44) The Last Window Giraffe by: Peter Zilahy

45) Riding Toward Everywhere by: William T. Vollmann

46) The Confessions of Max Tivoli by: Andrew Sean Greer

47) The Invention of Everything Else by: Samantha Hunt

48) The Butterfly Stories by: William T. Vollmann

49) Heir to the Glimmering World by: Cynthia Ozick

50) Finding Time Again by: Marcel Proust

51) The Book of Revelation by: Rupert Thomson

52) Europe Central by: William T. Vollmann

53) The Savage Detectives by: Roberto Bolano

54) The Master Butcher’s Singing Club by: Louise Erdrich

55) The Castle by: Franz Kakfa

56) One Good Turn by: Kate Atkinson

57) Beloved by: Toni Morrison

58) Netherland by: Joseph O’Neill

59) Last Evenings on Earth by: Roberto Bolano

60) Of Love and Other Demons by: Gabriel Garcia-Marquez

61) Fiskadoro by: Denis Johnson

62) Rings of Saturn by: W.G. Sebald

63) Dance, dance, dance by: Haruki Murakami

64) The Tipping Point by: Malcolm Gladwell

65) Gilead by: Marilynn Robinson 

66) The Library at Night by: Alberto Manguel

67) The Best American Non-Required Reading edited by: Dave Eggers

 68) Behind the Scenes at the Museum by: Kate Atkinson

69) Jorge Luis Borges: the Complete Fictions translated by: Andrew Huxley

70) What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by: Haruki Murakami

A bibliographic adventure. Well, I’m about to finish up my first semester of Library School. All I have to do is write 2 long term papers, make 2 presentations, and wrap it all up… Thank goodness for a chill Thanksgiving this year. And then off to Amsterdam with Becky and Home for the holidays. I look forward to the end so I can dive into Christmas reading and end of the year lists (which I love). I had a wonderful birthday and received: The New Murakami, The New Bolano, and the New Non Required Reading. Beautiful! 

I found a way to use literature to write a bibliographic essay…. I think I’m going to use Borges and track the influences he has caused throughout the last century. I have to start looking for all the resources I can find on this man and his writing, his history, and all. I am excited to incorporate my other passion into my non-passion, which is reference work. 

So, I have 3 books going right now and will write more about each soon, I promise! I’d like to find more time to write in this, so I’ll try to set aside some time each day for the next few weeks. Saint Jerome is the patron saint of reading and libraries, so I’ll think about him each day as well. Thanks to that comment, I feel inspired to continue sharing my thoughts about books. Library School is ho-hum… I hope it will get better. 

And you all! Tell me your thoughts about books!
Love,

Jessica

I am sitting here eating the candy intended for the children who never came to my house, thinking about Jorge Luis Borges. I will probably be simutaneously reading Borges and Bolano together once I get my hands on 2666, a posthumously published epic to be released next week or the week after… clocking in at 900 something pages. It majorly stinks that Bolano had to die and will not be around to explain it all to us. I bought Borges collected fictions at Mercer Street Books, impressing the man working there, who wanted to know why I was buying Borges, Thomas Lux, and The End of Mr. Y. He wanted to know if The End of Mr. Y was something he should know about considering the other books I was purchasing. Well, it turns out that Mr. Y is “chick lit for nerds” so I don’t know.

The book was really good, but I don’t know if he should be interested. I don’t know why it ended the way it did. I don’t know what goes through an author’s mind when they have to finish a book. Should the characters die, live happily ever after, return to reality, run off together, save the universe, or walk off into the sunset leaving things the way they are? In this book I think all of this happens. Ah, ruminations. Plot: young promisuous phd student finds book by person she is writing about. book cursed. reads book. figures out how to get to “Troposphere,” which is person’s consciousness. bad guys come after her to get the book. she runs away. tries to find professor who has also read the book. goes back into the “Troposphere” to destroy book. if she stays too long she’ll get stuck there. love interest follows her into the “Troposphere” after dreaming about how to do it. he has stayed too long. I won’t give away the ending.

Anyway, I am going to be reading through Borges collected works slowly… in the hopes of kindling an obsession. Borges was a Library Director! I have read, from 1935, 3 works from “A Universal History of Iniquity.” In his preface, Borges says:

“The learned doctors of the Great Vehicle teach us that the essential characteristic of the universe is its emptiness. They are certainly correct with respect to the tiny part of the universe that is this book. Gallows and pirates fill its pages, and that word iniquity strikes awe in its title, but under all the storm and lightening, there is nothing. It is all just appearance, a surface of images–which is why readers may, perhaps, enjoy it. The man who made it was a pitiable sort of creature, but he found amusement in writing it; it is hoped that some echo of that pleasure may reach its readers.”

The first story is called “The Cruel Redeemer Lazarus Morell” and there was one passage that stood out to me.

“The Mississippi is a broad-chested river, a dark and infinite brother of the Parana, the Uruguay, the Amazon, and the Orinoco. It is a river of mulatto-hued water; more than four hundred million tons of mud, carried by that water, insult the Gulf of Mexico each year. All that venerable and ancient waste has created a delta where gigantic swamp cypresses grow from the slough of a continent in perpetual dissolution and where labyrinths of clay, dead fish, and swamp reeds push out the borders and extend the peace of their fetid empire. Upstream, Arkansas and Ohio have their bottomlands too, populated by a jaundiced and hungry-looking race, prone to fevers, whose eyes gleam at the sight of stone and iron, for they know only sand and driftwood and muddy water.”

I am trying to think of ways to bring together literature and library service. I know that I need to do both. I would like to get a 2nd masters in literature. I would like to work in archives. I would love to work in an archive of authors or something related. I would like to work and do research at the same time. Not sure how to do that just yet. Everything I read, hear, and do reminds me that I will not be doing public library service. That leaves a lot of options, but I am enjoying doing archive work at the ACA and I can’t wait to figure out a next project for the coming year.

More on Borges later when I continue to read…. Happy Halloween! (Isn’t that picture of him creepy?)

I haven’t written in a long while. School has been swamping me with inane assignments, such as: interview a librarian, write about a librarian, ask a reference question at a library, write about library issues, write about librarything.com, immerse yourself in all things library… all the time. It’s crazy and probably not healthy to do this. I’m just trying to keep afloat. This is not to say that I have not been reading or thinking about books (which is where my real affections still lie). It has been drilled into me the past few weeks that being a librarian has little to do with books. Librarians do not select the books that go into their library. They don’t read the books in order to assign description, acess points, or classification. They make up subject headings based on scanning the books or the book’s indexes. And they are usually wrong. Libraries are glorified bookstores and librarians are not gatekeepers. They are teachers, sociologists, and security guards. They are public servants.

I have learned that I do not want to work in a public library or a school library. I am going to focus on special libraries, archives, or rare book collections. I want to be an archivist based on the work that I am doing at the American Composers Alliance. It feels nice to be able to take an extremely important document out of the bottom of a dingy filing cabinet and to make it available to those that need it.

On the reading front: I am reading a fun book called “The End of Mr. Y” by Scarlett Thomas. Very interesting. I am going to try and update what I’ve read so far this year. Will be back soon!

 This is the Jefferson Market Library. I am going to visit this library for a project for school, soon. It’s a branch of the NYPL. I’m currently not happy that I can’t get a NYPL card, because I reside in a strange far-away place called New Jersey…where the libraries just don’t cut it. However, I am allowed to visit the libraries here in NYC and marvel at their interesting architecture and sit and read the books inside. The Pratt Manhattan Campus Library, where I am a grad assistant has half a shelf of fiction titles, roughly 300 or so. I am going to read every single one systematically. Today, I picked Fiskadoro by Denis Johnson.

I have a lot to do. October is full of due dates. October starts on Wednesday. I have to get my head out of the clouds and do some real school work. My head loves being in the clouds. My head loves reading about books that I can’t get a hold of. I need to set attainable goals for each day. I make these to do lists that are not realistic. And then I sit down and watch 3 hours of Weeds. Its self sabotage. I’m going to try and read some reference services textbook now. I’ll try to be more dedicated to reviewing the books that I am reading.

Here is the passage from Dance, Dance, Dance that I’ve been wanting to share…

“I slept for thirty minutes, and the rest of the trip I read a biography of Jack London I’d bought near the Hakodate station. Compared to the grand sweep and romance of Jack London’s life, my existence seemed like a squirrel with its head against a walnut, dozing until spring. For the time being, that is. But that’s how biographies are. I mean, who’s going to read about the peaceful life and times of a nobody employed at the Kawasaki Municipal Library? In other words, what we seek is some kind of compensation for what we put up with.”

I added the emphasis.

And then there is the Sheepman. The title to this blog is so true: I stopped typing for the past 5 minutes and in those minutes I have; 1) found a new Murakami blog and have been browsing it http://www.exorcising-ghosts.co.uk/news.html   2) been looking for a visual representation of the sheepman to share. 3) tried to fix the stampy thing to say the right due date for checked out 4) answered a phone query 5) got my textbook off the shelf to start reading…after I completely forgot that I was writing in this blog.

Anyway, here is one artist interpretation…not how I pictured the sheepman at all.

 Martha Mysko

Here is one of the covers of Dance, Dance, Dance….

 This is an actual horned sheep in a sweater-vest. So you get the idea that the sheepman is not actually described in order to represented in any particular way. He’s usually described as a man in a sheep costume, and the costume has grown into him and he’s musty and of course, not real. Of course. Here is what the sheepman says… and it is advice I hold dear to my heart.

“Dance,” said the Sheep Man. “Yougottadance. Aslongasthemusicplays. Yougotta dance. Don’teventhinkwhy. Starttothink, yourfeetstop. Yourfeetstop, wegetstuck. Wegetstuck, you’restuck. Sodon’tpayanymind, nomatterhowdumb. Yougottakeepthestep. Yougottalimberup. Yougottaloosenwhatyoubolteddown. Yougottauseallyougot. Weknowyou’re tired, tiredandscared. Happenstoeveryone, okay? Justdon’tletyourfeetstop.”

“Dancingiseverything,” continued the Sheep Man. “Danceintip-topfrom. Dancesoitallkeepsspinning. Ifyoudothat, wemightbeabletodosomethingforyou. Yougottadance, Aslongasthemusicplays.”

Yes, the Sheep Man talks like that. Bear with me, and read the book.

Last, but not least…here is what Murakami says about his new novel that he is writing. I can’t wait!!!

“It is about ‘horror.’ I have a hunch to produce a good novel. I think it will be an important work of mine.”

Now 59, Murakami said: “Like [Feodor Mikhailovich] Dostoevsky who wrote The Possessed and The Brothers Karamazov and became productive as he got older, I’d like to do the same thing.”

Ok, now I really have to try and study.

Yayoi Kusama Fireflies on Water.

So…my pledge is to blog more. And to study more. And to participate more. So it starts now. My lame attempt at studying today was stymied by pandora radio, where I wrote down many things to add to the ‘pod. I’ve had many blogging plans…usually made on the bus, subway, street level, etc…. let me tell you: it is harder than it looks to find a coffeeshop in NYC with free wireless….where there aren’t 10,000 people waiting on line for coffee. In NYC people wait “on line”, not “in line.”

So, I’ve finished Roberto Bolano’s Last Evenings on Earth and Gabriel Garcia-Marquez’s Of Love and Other Demons. I’m still reading Murakami’s Dance, Dance, Dance. I’ve been meaning to quote and cite songs and I just can’t keep up with my own brain. I just can’t. I sat down to study 3 hours ago and here I am. I will say that Bolano’s short stories are magnificent and that Garcia-Marquez’s novella is less magical realism than religious mysticisim, which is nice. My favorite image in the Murakami is when the protagonist is exhausted and instead of merely falling into a deep sleep, a grey gorilla enters the room and whacks him in the head with a mallet. Its funny.

I think Ani sums it up nicely for us:

“the sun is setting on the century
and we are armed to the teeth
we are all working together now
to make our lives mercifully brief
schoolkids keep trying to teach us
what guns are all about
confuse liberty with weaponry
and watch your kids act it out
every year now like Christmas
some boy gets the milk-fed sub-urban blues
reaches for the available arsenal
and saunters off to make the news
and women in the middle
are learning what poor women have always known
that the edge is closer than you think
when your men bring the guns home

look at where the profits are
that’s how you’ll find the source
of the big lie that you and i
both know so well
in the time it takes this cultural
death wish to run its course
they’re gonna make a pretty penny
and then they’re all going to hell
he said the chickens all come home to roost
yeah, malcom forecasted this flood
are we really gonna sleep through another century
while the rich profit off our blood?
true, it may take some doing
to see this undoing done
but in my humble opinion
here’s what i suggest we do:

open fire on hollywood
open fire on MTV
open fire on NBC
and CBS and ABC
open fire on the NRA
and all the lies they told us
along the way
open fire on each weapons manufacturer
while he’s giving head
to some republican senator

and if i hear one more time
about fool’s rights
to his tools of rage
I’m gonna take all my friends
and I’m gonna move to Canada
and we’re gonna die of old age.”

I’m going to la la la and maybe blog some more tomorrow. Love, Jessica

I learned that the Main Reading Room at the New York Public Library looks just like this in person. And that it’s real pretty and that I’d like to study in there sometimes. I learned that I can walk down the hill to a different bus stop that shaves 30 minutes off my travel commute. (But it’s getting cooler so a brisk walk it shall be). I learned that I heart Roberto Bolano for writing stories from his point of view about others completely different from himself. I learned that the more expensive quiche tastes better. (This I learned at home and on the way to school)… My class today at the NYPL was 5 hours long. We introduced ourselves, ate lunch, lectured, went to visit the tel-ref department…learned how they answer questions from all over the world. Really random questions and really stupid questions. I think I may want to be a reference librarian when I grow up. At least for this week.

I am really enjoying my mac. I feel like it will never slow down or crash because right now I am 1. surfing the web. 2. writing in my blog. 3. uploading 700 pictures. 4. charging my ipod. and nothing seems to be freaking out about all this. My background is pretty fish. I can type real fast on this keyboard. I can carry it to NYC.

I am reading ‘Last Evenings on Earth’ by Roberto Bolano. I just finished Netherland by Joseph O’Neill. I am re-reading Dance, Dance, Dance by Haruki Murakami and since I claim it to be my favoritist book on planet earth, I’m going to try and explain why while I read it again. First about Netherland. Its a book about cricket and human relationships right here in NYC. The protagonist is from Holland, transplanted into NYC before, during and after 9/11. Befriends a strange man (and the story is really about this strange man). Its really nicely written–for instance… and this is from me randomly opening a page

“As I repeatedly went forth with him and began to understand the ignorance and contradictions and language difficulties with which he contended, and the doubtful sources of his information and the seemingly bottomless history and darkness our of which the dishes of New York emerge, the deeper grew my suspicion that his work finally consisted of minting or perpetuating and in any event circulating misconceptions about his subject and in this way adding to the endless perplexity of the world.”

Anyway, it was short and I liked it.  Back to Murakami briefly… I have read the first 2 or 3 chapters so far. The main character is lost. He has transitioned in his life and has gone through a period where he doesn’t leave the house. Of course (as per Murakami) there is a mysterious call girl “crying” out to him. Abstractly of course. Now this callgirl has a name–Kiki. She is what connects him to ‘The Dolphin Hotel’, a dumpy hotel where strange things have occurred and the place where he needs to go back. Oh, and his cat has died. Classic set up 1. nameless generic slightly depressed young man. 2. mysterious callgirl/female character who is currently missing 3. cat. 4. strange building that may or may not still exist that the male character is obsessed with. I’m not saying Murakami is formulaic, its just that certain things stick out between each novel. Like Wind-up Bird for instance. 1. generic slightly depressed nameless (he has a name but its Toru, which is pretty generic in Japan). 2. mysterious girl character (young next door neighbor girl who is obsessed with death. 3. cat (just missing, but pretty much presumed dead until it shows up) 4. strange building in neighborhood (haunted, becomes headquarters) other buildings show up as well, plus the well for that matter. Its a permeable space at least (as the Dolphin Hotel becomes in Dance Dance Dance.

Sorry, I love it. Read it if you think I’m making any of this up. Its fantastic.

Love, Jessica

 Rip David Foster Wallace. I tried to finish Infinite Jest. The world is less because we don’t have more writers like this.

I got a job at the American Composers Alliance to take care of file cabinets full of info on composers. Not sure exactly what I’m going to be able to bring to the table. Hopefully I’ll have set duties.

I finished Beloved by Toni Morrison and No Good Turn by Kate Atkinson.

I need to start an assignment for school. I’m writing about the American Libraries Association’s stance on independent libraries in Cuba. These libraries are being prosecuted and the operators imprisoned. Apparently, all ALA has to do is publicly “denounce” this. Others say that this is not enough. It shouldn’t take too long to write this assignment.

I am now reading Netherland by Joseph O’Neill. It is about a man in NYC in the years after 9/11, whose wife has left him and he seeks out cricket adventures. I really like it so far. I am also reading Last Evenings on Earth by Roberto Bolano, another writer who left us too soon. It is a book of short stories and of course I love it.

I’m getting my mac today I think.

 from the Reference textbook I was told to not bother to buy…

“Most of the time, most reference librarians find effective ways to cope with stress. However, sometimes the copng strategies chosen are ineffective and even contribute more stress, in a sort of ‘vicious circle.’ When this happens to a reference librarian, he or she is suffering from burnout.”

I think I might just buy if for the laughs.

 I like this photograph of Ani Difranco (© Mark Dellas) because it seems like the photograph that in 50 years will most likely explain to me my view of her. (If that makes sense). It reminds me of the iconic Virginia Woolf portrait. Go Here to listen to her new album “Red Letter Year”. Love her.

My Blogroll: I am taking a lot from Library Juice blog which is already included on my blogroll. I am aware that this is simply taking their links and putting them on my blog. I am mostly doing it for myself. A place where I can simply click on my own blog when I need to access something. There is a mind-blowingly immense amount of information on the web about my subject area. I think I need to concentrate on something in particular.

For example, I just found THIS ARTICLE about finding time to think. Check it out! It is so interesting and applies to my life a lot. I quote:

“The most common advice boils down to something that might seem obvious: only work when you’re being paid to work. The rest of the day is yours to do with as you wish – and you may wish to devote it to thought.”

“”I can say that all great creators, without exception, have taken breaks,” says Buzan. “A minimum of two a day.” “Leonardo Da Vinci had a bed in his studio and when patrons accused him of wasting time, he said ‘If I don’t do this, you don’t get the work.”

I’ll keep adding now…