friday fun
jdupuis | July 10, 2009Bookgasm is one of my favourite book blogs, if not THE favourite. They have a regular feature by Bruce Grossman called, rather luridly, Bullets, Broads, Blackmail & Bombs which gives brief reviews and descriptions of tons of cheesy old paperback originals: mostly adventure, noir, hardboiled, detective. A lot of the stuff he talks about is pretty bad, but Grossman also reviews a lot of classic pulp by Donald Westlake, John D. Macdonald, Donald Hamilton, Eric Ambler and tons of others. Even when the reading is grim, Grossman keeps his commentary lively and entertaining.
Some recent…
jdupuis | July 3, 2009Via BoingBoing, BBG and Make, Paul Fryer makes some pretty cool chess sets.
Links to the pics on the Gallery site are here, here, here, here.
jdupuis | June 26, 2009Rush on over to Feminist SF -- The Blog and read this very funny -- and thought-provoking, to boot -- post: How to know if you're reading a bad book.
Here's a couple of the short ones:
5. Does anyone lurk? If someone's lurking, you might be reading a Bad Book.
11. Does the book begin with some sort of random sex scene meant to show you how desirable / virile one of the protags is because if you don't know about his / her addictive sexuality you won't understand why they're supposed to be attractive given their lack of any other character traits of note? If so, you might be reading a Bad Book…
jdupuis | June 19, 2009From McSweeny's, this is both very funny and very poignant. A working day's worth of tweets from a public librarian.
Boy wants book on how to make paper airplanes. I challenge him to a paper airplane contest.
about 3 hours ago from web
*snip*
Ask patron not to talk on their cell phone. They explain that the cell phone designated area is too loud.
about 8 hours ago from web
These are an actual day's worth or tweets from public librarian Scott Douglas, author of Quiet, Please: Dispatches from a Public Librarian. I've just subscribed to the Twitter feed.
(Via Rachel Walden.)
jdupuis | June 12, 2009Thanks to Mark Spicer for bringing this item to my attention. Note that the site I'm linking to sells printer cartridges, but still has some cool content.
The 7 Most Impressive Libraries From Throughout History. Drop by the article, it's well worth reading. It also has links to each of the libraries.
The Great Library & Mouseion: The First Universal Library (Alexandria, Egypt)
The Celsus Library: One of Antiquity's Finest Libraries (Ephesus, Turkey)
The University of Sankore: An Ancient Seat of Muslim Learning (Sankore, Timbuktu)
The Bodleian: One of The Oldest Surviving European…
jdupuis | June 5, 2009I've more or less promised sets of Canadian and jazz songs for this series, but lately I've been so entranced with the latest Derek Trucks Band CD, Already Free, that I thought I'd feature a Derek Trucks extended family post, all featuring laid back blues rock. Not only does Trucks release his own music, but he's also one of the guitarists for the Allman Brothers Band.
Here are five great songs showcasing Derek Trucks and his extended musical family:
Down in the Flood by The Derek Trucks Band. The first single off the new album.
Desdemona by The Allman Brothers Band. A great track…
jdupuis | May 29, 2009Bookgasm is a great site that reviews a lot of fun reading in all kinds of genres. As the name indicates, they don't necessarily take themselves too seriously either.
About a month ago they had a post on Paper or Plastic?: The Books vs. Kindle Showdown that is absolutely hilarious. It's a 10 item smackdown on the usefulness of owning 200 paper books versus the Kindle in various life-changing moments. Often somehow involving zombies.
In any case, here's a taste:
SITUATION #2
Government experimentation has caused the dead to rise up from their cold and lonely graves and stalk the living in…
jdupuis | May 22, 2009My last Friday Fun post at the old home was a list of five hard rock songs that I really love. I enjoyed doing that list so much, I thought I'd do it again this time, but with a focus on the blues.
I'm a Criminal by Paul Reddick + The Sidemen. This song totally blew me away the first time I heard it and it will totally blow you away too.
How Blue Can You Get by BB King. BB King was the very first blues artist I got into. My father was a huge Johnny Carson fan when I was growing up and I often used to stay up with him and watch The Tonight Show. And Carson loved blues and jazz music and…