I just read David Lee King’s post about Foursquare and Libraries and I’m intrigued. Foursquare is a location based social networking game that encourages you to explore your city by “checking in” when you visit various places. You can see who else has been there, add tips, tags, and to-do lists, and earn points and badges depending on what you do. For example, the first time you use FourSquare you get the Newbie badge. After 10 check-ins you get the Adventurer badge. Visit a place more than anyone else and you become mayor – at least until someone unseats you.

Like many social networking sites, FourSquare had definite potential for libraries. After all, shouldn’t visiting your local library be a key part of exploring your town? Your library can add to-do lists for patrons – like get a library card, check out 5 books, or attend a workshop. You can also add tips like free wi-fi, closes at 6 on Friday, new video game collection, and so on.

Many businesses have already realized the potential for FourSquare by offering rewards to loyal customers. These generally are along the lines of a free drink for the mayor, or free fries to anyone who’s checked-in more than 10 times. What if libraries offered similar rewards? Perhaps a waived fine, free book from the book sale, the ability to check out an extra DVD, or even just recognition on the electronic message board.

We went to the Cambridge Public Library yesterday in spite of the frigid temps. I’m glad we braved the cold because the new, light, and glassy section is lovely and interplay with the old romanesque building is especially striking. There is an article from the Boston Globe about the building’s architect, here. We’ll be back again, I’m sure.

Coincidentally, today the Boston Globe named the Library one of the city’s Best New Hangouts. Here’s the blurb:

Cambridge Public Library The glassy new wing feels like a treehouse, looks like a bookstore, and hums like a city square. Ceiling panels above the children’s room mimic a forest canopy. The location of books is dictated by logic, not the Dewey Decimal System. And teens have a high-energy lounge of their own. 449 Broadway, Cambridge, 617-349-4030, cambridgema.gov/CPL

At the library we have a section of new books–not necessarily new in the chronological sense, but new to our collection–and I can always find something interesting there (and if I’m not careful, bring home way too many books).  Here’s my quick list of some fiction books that have caught my eye over the past couple of weeks.

The Day the Falls Stood Still – Cathy Marie Buchanan

This book was mentioned in the Flickr group The 25 Book Challenge and is set during World War I and incorporates the development of hydroelectric power at Niagara Falls.  I do love a story set within little-known time periods.

Yellow Blue Tibia – Adam Roberts

“Russia, 1946. With the Nazis recently defeated, Stalin gathers half a dozen of the top Soviet science fiction authors in a dacha in the countryside. Convinced that the defeat of America is only a few years away—and equally convinced that the Soviet Union needs a massive external threat to hold it together—Stalin orders the writers to compose a massively detailed and highly believable story about an alien race poised to invade the earth. The little group of writers gets down to the task and spends months working until new orders come from Moscow to immediately halt the project. The scientists obey and live their lives until, in the aftermath of Chernobyl, the survivors gather again, because something strange has happened: the story they invented in 1946 is starting to come true.” – from Amazon.

I nabbed this description from Amazon because I didn’t really feel like I could describe it as well.  The cover interested me, and then reading about the plot intrigued me.  It sounds a bit like a Twilight Zone episode.

Boneshaker - Cherie Priest

Another science fiction entry, this time a steampunk tale set in an alternate universe 1880s America.  I’ve been interested in the whole steampunk/alternate history thing since The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen came out (and no, I haven’t read the graphic novel), but have never really pursued it — this might be the book that will lead me to do just that.  Plus there are zombies, so that’s cool.

Cave Man – Xiaoda Xiao

I actually checked this one out a while back but didn’t get to it before my classes started, so I haven’t read it yet.  In this book, the main character spends years in Chinese labor camps and solitary confinement under Mao’s rule.  Upon his release, he tries to connect with his former wife, as well as the daughter he’s never met.

Elementary Particles – Michel Houellebecq

Besides the fact that looking at the author’s name makes me want to break into “Hollaback Girl”, I was interested in this one because it’s the story of two half-brothers who are totally different from each other.  One is way too interested in sex, the other not at all — and also discovers a way to clone humans so that sex is unnecessary.  This one was first published in 2000, so one of the new-to-me-but-maybe-not-to-you.

Have you seen any books lately that have caught your eye?

By Betty Bowling

Remember this line from the movie The field of dreams: “If you build it, they will come?”  the character in the movie was building a baseball diamond.  Greg Mortenson, in his latest book Stones into schools, has a bigger dream.  His dream is to build schools for girls in Afghanistan and Pakistan, to promote peace with books, not bombs.  And if he builds them, they do come! 

In sixteen years, Mortenson and the Central Asia Institute (CAI) have established 131 schools that currently serve 58,000 students, most of them girls, without using a dollar of money from the U.S. government.  With $50,000, The CAI can build a school, furnish it, and pay the teachers’ salaries for five years. 

Twenty dollars is enough to educate a first grader for an entire year.

An African proverb says, “If you teach a boy, you educate an individual, but if you teach a girl, you educate a community.”  When girls learn to read they will teach their mothers, and when mothers become educated they will not endorse violent jihad, and that helps to keep the sons out of war and violence.

The U.S. military has recruited Greg as a consultant on how to fashion better relationships with tribal leaders and village elders.  They have a lot to learn from him.  We all do.  Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, reminds us that

Only through a shared appreciation of the people’s culture, needs, and hopes for the future can we hope ourselves to supplant the extremist narrative.  We must listen to them, one heart and one mind at a time.

The St. James Library is open every Sunday morning from 9:30-12:30

Read more book reviews from the St. James Library

I’m currently reading The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, which is pretty book.  I read it in English a few years ago and am now reading it in Spanish.  Since Spanish is my second language and I haven’t read much in Spanish for a while, it is a very good reminder for me about how much our adult learners struggle when they read.

Our copy of Shadow of the Wind is checked out, but you can put it on hold at: http://cityofmonrovia.ws/community-life/library/library-catalog.

Enjoy!

I went to Barnes and Noble to purchase Salinger’s, Nine Stories. I had read “Catcher in the Rye”, but heard that his short stories are better.

Anyway, It was sort of an early Saturday morning, eleven o’clock, but the place was packed. I was hoping to avoid a crowd. Boy, was I wrong! Sad thing though, some of the people there, were just kids hanging out, being loud; the rest, you could tell, were browsing the people instead of the books. I guess, looking for a hook-up.

The whole Barnes and Noble trip just reiterated in my own mind, another reason why I prefer the library.

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (Alfred A. Knopf, 2006), 576 pages

Summary
The Book Thief is narrated by Death. It’s set in Germany, opening in 1939. Yes, that’s World War II. Liesel Meminger, at age 9, is taken (by her mother) to live in Molching, Germany, with a foster family. On the journey, she steals her first book, even though she can’t yet read. She’s haunted by nightmares of her younger brother’s death.

Among other awards, The Book Thief was a Printz Honor Book in 2007.

Thoughts
I knew I was missing out by having not yet read this book. I started reading it in 2008, but it was during the read-a-thon, in the middle of the night, and I just wasn’t capable of reading a book narrated by Death in the middle of the night and still appreciating it. Alas, it’s taken me nearly two years to get back to it, but at least I finally have.

I found the voice of this book to be wholly unique. While most of the material wasn’t new to me (although a bit of the perspective I hadn’t read before), this was *not* just another Holocaust book. The writing is superb, achingly beautiful. (I feel like I use that phrase way too much …) I also found it quite interesting how most things are fully disclosed before they actually happen — the narrator “spoils” himself.

The characters, the bookish elements, the writing — all excellent. A gorgeous book with a heinous setting. I say setting because war is not really what the book is about. It’s a backdrop, sure, and hardly a page goes by without mention of it, but the book is about Liesel, about words.

My only complaint (and it’s a small one): The prologue doesn’t really fit the book. After I’d read the prologue, I was sort of dreading this book. But once I got past that, the story sucked me in and the pages flew by.

Although this book was first published in just 2006, I’d call it a classic. This is a book that will endure. If you haven’t read it yet, why not? Sure, it’s not exactly short, but it’s also a young adult book, so the pages fly by (well, the fact that it’s a great story helps that, too). You have no excuse. Read it.

I definitely want to read more of Zusak’s work — I’m particularly intrigued by his I Am the Messenger.

About the author
Markus Zusak lives in Sydney, Australia. Read an interview with Zusak at the Random House website.

Other reviews
Maw Books
So Many Books
At Home with Books
In the Shadow of Mt. TBR
Musings of a Bookish Kitty
A Chair, a Fireplace & and Tea Cozy
My Two Blessings
The Book Lady’s Blog
CaribousMom

Still want more reviews? Check out the Book Blogs Search Engine.

Have you reviewed this book? Leave me a link and I’ll add it here.

I checked this book out from the library.

My impetus for finally picking this book up was the Social Justice Challenge; the January theme has been religious freedom. It’s certainly not a stretch to see how this book fits that theme.

This project starts under the umbrella of the Glasgow School of Art and the South Lanarkshire Council; as part of the subject Contextual Practices for the students of the Master in Design Innovation, branded as GetGo, and working in partnership with department of Education Resources of the area. We will be working in collaboration with John Barr (Library development) and Keith Donnally (Arts development).

The challenge is to rejuvenate and improve the libraries’ system and facilities. In the past, libraries were set up as resource of free knowledge and with an educational aim. Nowadays, this function is becoming old-fashioned. Education is not reserved for a few anymore. Mass media and new technologies have also brought knowledge into our home. Therefore the concept of library also has to evolve. As John Barr claims “the future lies on the cultural sector”

As designers, it is our job to find out the opportunities and develop the appropriate systems to make that change happen.

And I still don’t take enough time to post here even with all the amazing apps. I suppose I need to get a little more orginized. However!

I’m happy to announce that I have an artist for the next Dr.N book cover. She’s awesome.  DR. N is now 300 pages long and I was re-assured by my almost complete stranger of an artist that it was good. So I’m going to take her word for it becuase it was on the fly and technically she is doing this pro bono!

Which image would you like to be used for the button? (Or do you have any other suggestions?)

This one

or

this one?