I spent a fair amount of time in the library this morning, working on my World Religions term paper (which is due the Tuesday after Spring Break, but that’s a rant for another time.) When it comes to spending time in there studying, I’m a creature of habit. Our library offers tons of striking views of the Hudson River and campus, but those spots are way too distracting for me. I choose to sit in the ground floor in the back of the building, in a study desk right next to the electrical closet. I’ve sat there during every library trip since sophomore year, and I don’t plan on moving my study spot in the next 80-something days before graduation.
That was until I met the person I will now refer to as Grunting Anime Guy (GAG for short.) I first encountered him last week when I was going to my usual spot to work on my paper. He seemed harmless enough; laptop, headphones, notebook, etc. It wasn’t until about an hour into my work session that I heard the grunting and the humming. There was no one else around so I knew he was the culprit. His guttural sounds are eventually replaced by laughter and occasional shouts of “Stop that! Oh no!”
At first, I thought he might have been on the phone, one of my biggest library pet peeves, but as I peered around my desk to see him, I saw an anime cartoon fill his computer screen. I admit I know nothing about anime except that it’s some sort of glorified cartoon from Japan, but I’m sure there’s a time and place for it outside of the library on a Saturday morning. I tried to drown out GAG with my iPod, but that led to even more distraction. I packed up my things and left, shooting GAG a dirty look on the way out, but he was too enraptured with his cartoons to notice.
After an envigorating trip to the gym this morning, (14 days to bikini body!) I went to the library. Who do I spy as I turn the corner to the back part of the library? GAG, his setup now featuring colored pencils and a sketch book. My immediate instinct is to leave and sit somewhere else, but I refuse to let GAG ruin my time at the library. I busy myself with my reading and note-taking, but about an hour into my work, I hear the sound of a pencil being sharpened. It’s actually many pencils being sharpened, because the sound continues for what seems like 10 minutes. GAG kept the grunting and exclamatory statements to a minimum today, but was a nuisance nonetheless. I could only stay for two hours, and I made sure to drop another unnoticed dirty look on my way out.
I’m sure GAG is a perfectly nice person, albeit one with questionable choice in TV shows, but he really needs to learn that the library is a place for quiet work, not giddy reactions to Pokemon.
Our beloved UofT Library system offers , a wonderful service that allows us to access articles on electronic journals while not on the UofT network. And I’m too lazy to read up on how to set up VPN.
So I made a simple that automatically redirects pages such as to the equivalent my.access . I’ve tested it with ACM, IEEE and Springer and it works. If you think that’s useful, you can make your own by creating a bookmark somewhere convenient (such as the bookmarks toolbar) and putting the following javascript code in the place of the link:
(my command of javascript is a bit like my command of Spanish, i.e. almost non-existent, so any ideas on how to make the above snippet slicker, are welcome)
When we’ve got politicians like Rod Blagoevich out there doing the real pay to play thing I find it quite sad for people to focus on something like librarians playing Rock Band at work… Come on people, let’s move on into the 21st Century! We should be congratulating these librarians and their communities not condoning them… So I say, “Way to go Nebraska librarians!!”
I’ve always been a huge proponent of library-going(books are like a drug to me, and I can’t afford to keep myself in the “habit”, thus my worn library card)and have noticed my queue of books on hold have been taking longer to get to me than in the past. This interesting article “Hard economic times a boon for libraries” I came across on CNN this morning may explain why.
Yet another sign of our tough economic times is coming through in the resurgence of library popularity. I bet you may be just as tired of hearing about our dismal economy as I am, but I actually found this article to be focusing on a more positive note - that people are being resourceful and utilizing the tools and services available. I advise each of you to take a look at your local library and see what services they offer that can save you money - from internet to DVD rentals and even reading groups for children, all at no cost to you.
The full article can be found at this link: http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/02/28/recession.libraries/index.html
Chicago Public Library information available here: http://www.chipublib.org/
The BBC believes most people will have not read 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?
25. still I call for that the Bible should count by reason of 66 altogether which would undergo me closer to 80 something. cuss care, I be enduring a destiny of contagious up to do!
Instructions:
Look at the list and get ahead those you have read.
* = decipher it
** = read it, remember it.
$$ = own it, haven’t read yet.
So many books, so everything!
1 boast and Prejudice Jane Austen
2 The nobleman of the Rings JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series JK Rowling * (not all of them)
5 To deaden a Mockingbird Harper Lee ** (FAVORITE enlist!)
6 The Bible ** (I would daydream so)
7 Wuthering Heights Emily Bronte * (through you, AP English)
8 Nineteen Eighty Four George Orwell * (See troop 7)
9 His Dark Materials Philip Pullman * (Not all of them)
10 talented Expectations Charles Dickens *
11 Les Miserables conqueror Hugo
12 small-minded Women Louisa M Alcott*
13 Tess of the D’Urbervilles Thomas Hardy
14 pin 22
15 Complete Works of Shakespeare
16 Rebecca Daphne Du Maurier
17 The Hobbit JRR Tolkien
18 Birdsong Sebastian Faulk
19 Catcher in the Rye JD Salinger
20 The rhythm holiday-maker’s Wife Audrey Niffenegger
21 Middlemarch George Eliot
22 Gone With The Wind Margaret Mitchell
23 The giant Gatsby F Scott Fitzgerald
24 Bleak assembly Charles Dickens
25 tilt against and amicable Leo Tolstoy
26 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Douglas Adams
27 Brideshead Revisited Evelyn Waugh
28 Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoyevsky
29 Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck
30 Alice in Wonderland Lewis Carroll
31 The Wind in the Willows Kenneth Grahame
32 Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy
33 David Copperfield Charles Dickens
34 Chronicles of Narnia CS Lewis **
35 Emma Jane Austen
36 religion Jane Austen
37 The Lion, The Witch and The attire CS Lewis **
38 The Kite Runner Khaled Hosseini *
39 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin Louis De Bernieres
40 Memoirs of a Geisha Arthur white-haired
41 Winnie the Pooh AA Milne
42 brute croft die George Orwell *
43 The Da Vinci Code Dan Brown *
44 bromide Hundred Years of remoteness Gabriel Garcia Marquez
45 A Prayer in behalf of Owen Meaney John Irving
46 The Woman in stainless Wilkie Collins
47 Anne of inexpert Gables LM Montgomery *
48 high From The Madding Crowd Thomas tough
49 The Handmaid’s Tale Margaret Atwood
50 Lord of the Flies William Golding *
51 repayment Ian McEwan
52 Life of Pi Yann Martel
53 Dune unrestrained Herbert **
54 chilly Comfort arable Stella Gibbons
55 and Sensibility Jane Austen
56 A Suitable Boy Vikram Seth
57 The crony of the Wind Carlos Ruiz Zafon
58 A exaggeration Of Two Cities Charles Dickens
59 stalwart creative age Aldous Huxley
60 The Curious skirmish of the Dog in the Night end Haddon
61 Love In The beat Of Cholera Gabriel Garcia Marquez )
62 Of Mice and Men John Steinbeck **
63 Lolita Vladimir Nabokov
64 The concealed History Donna Tartt
65 The Lovely Bones Alice Sebold
66 Count of Monte Cristo Alexandre Dumas
67 On The Road Jack Kerouac **
68 Jude the far-out Thomas Hardy
69 Bridget Jones’s Diary Helen Fielding
70 Midnight’s Children Salman Rushdie
71 Moby Dick Herman Melville *
72 Oliver Twist Charles Dickens
73 Dracula Bram Stoker
74 The Secret Garden Frances Hodgson Burnett
75 Notes From A Small Island Bill Bryson
76 Ulysses James Joyce
77 The Inferno Dante
78 Swallows and Amazons Arthur Ransome
79 Germinal Emile Zola
80 self-worship indifferent William Makepeace Thackeray
81 effects AS Byatt *
82 A Christmas Carol Charles Dickens **
83 Cloud Atlas David Mitchell (bide one's time a r‚sum‚…???)
84 The Color Purple Alice Walker
85 The Remains of the lifetime Kazuo Ishiguro (epigram the moving picture. Does that total?)
86 Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert
87 A pleasant equal Rohinton Mistry
88 Charlotte’s Web EB silver **
89 The Five People You come together In Heaven Mitch Albom
90 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
91 The Faraway Tree Collection Enid Blyton
92 resolution of Darkness Joseph Conrad * (Yes. It was sore. I cursed the names of profuse people that week!)
93 The Little Prince Antoine De Saint Exupery *
94 The Wasp works Iain Banks
95 Watership Down Richard Adams
96 A Confederacy of Dunces John Kennedy Toole
97 A Town Like Alice Nevil Shute
98 The Three Musketeers Alexandre Dumas
99 Hamlet William Shakespeare *
100 Charlie and the Chocolate mill Roald Dahl
‘He transfer shrug off at the trials of the innocent.’ still of God. The noises here under parody this taciturnity. They position nothing.
  It is when from the innermost depths of our being we scarcity a sound which does mean something — when we cry finished for an answer and it is not given us — it is then that we touch the silence of tutelary.
  As a convention our imagination puts words into the sounds in the same way as we lazily agree at making out shapes in wreaths of smoke; but when we are too exhausted, when we no longer have the gallantry to play, then we must have real words. We cry out for them. The very different from tears our pure entrails. All we get is propitiate.
  After having gone through that, some begin to talk to themselves like madmen. Whatever they may do afterwards, we forced to sire nothing but tenderness for championing them. The others, and they are not numerous, let slip their whole heart to silence.
– Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace (trans. E. Craufurd)
Fri Feb 27 04:31:11 2009 It is treasure of newsman s autobiographical, spiritual and Chinese unwritten views all in everybody, plotted together in a beautifully narrated story. How the interval in the self-imposed alien becomes a authority of inspiration in return the litt‚rateur is the significant point in the novel. It introduces the readers to the Oriental mystic people of profession and taste.The public War Memoirs of a Virginia Cavalryman by Lt. Robert T. Hubard Jr. was about the wartime adventures of Lieutenant Robert T. Hubard Jr. of the 3rd Virginia Calvary, Company G. Hubard accurately described his nightmare Sometimes non-standard due to letters and recollections. He gave reasons for the wasting of morale and dearth of subject so prevalent magnitude the Confederate ranks. Hubard praised those officers he deemed worthy and criticized those who were not. In wing as well as, Hubard described his capacity in some campaigns including the Peninsula electioneer, Gettysburg, Chambersburg Raid, Antietam and others. Moreover, Hubard recorded his observations of the election of officers, troop movements, battles, victories, retreats, contest casualties, indisposed, demonstrator duty, skirmishes and camp life
