Promises, promises

The past few weeks have kept me busy and unable to update this site. I also realized that I started to stray some from the more professional reader's advisory purpose of the site with the quickfire review challenge. On the other hand I had fun with that so I'm not apologizing.

Anyway a quick preview of what I'll be reviewing here, on Library Thing, and on the Reading Sarah Livejournal.

I've been on a series Chris Crutcher kick here lately so Deadline, Whale Talk, and Stotan! are all on the list.
Harmless by Dana Reinhardt
The Hollywood Nobody series by Lisa Samson

I'll also be doing reviews of two illustrated novels and then comparing and contrasting them. This may not be fair, but I read them both over the course of one night and it really struck me how very different Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian is from Jeff Kinney's Diary of a Wimpy Kid.

Before I go I'd just like to say that Freaks and Geeks, a short lived tv series by Judd Apatow was much better the first time I watched. I can re-read the same book a thousand times, I have seen Princess Bride probably 200-300 times, and this is not an unusual trend for me. So it is very sad that other than the character "Bill" no one and no plot is truly holding my attention for a full second viewing.
Oh, and also, Kung Fu panda was adorable, energetic, and funny. I understand why it gets the criticism it gets, but I throughly enjoyed it. Skadoosh!

Library 2.0

You might notice that I'm pretty big on using web 2.0 for library or library-esque purposes. That all started with this:
kohafive: Review: The Time Traveler's Wife / Audrey Niffenegger

This link takes you to a review I did for a blogger application linked to a Koha open source integrated library system (the online library catalog for non-librarians.) This was set up for a Library Technologies class project during my MLS studies. (Though the review itself was written for another course.) Basically we had a blogger where we posted youtube video reviews/trailers, our own reviews, or other reviews and then we linked it back to the "url" line in the marc record. It wasn't always the prettiest but it worked. Also nice was the fact that we could link the blog to the item in the record and so doubling the usefulness of the Library 2.0 technology. I really liked the Liblime Koha platform, it was really librarian and patron friendly, and fairly intuitive. Blogspot has always been super-user friendly and easy to make professional-looking without devoting an insane amount of time to getting it running smoothly. I love my LibraryThing applications and how easy it was to link LT back to Blogspot and vice versa. That is probably one of my favorite things about the web and readers' advisory: once a good resource is found they often have a web (2.0) of other resources that are as useful and accessible.

Zombiepocalypse!

Brooks, Max. World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War. New York: Crown, 2006.

Those of you who know me know I love a good zombie survival tale. In fact, I even made a "How to Survive the Zombiepocalypse" annotated reading list. Recently my library school reading group read Monsters Horror for our group meeting and the only two of us who showed up both had read Monster Island by David Wellington (which is not going to be reviewed here, for a number of reasons.) But prior even to that reading group announcement I'd checked out every zombie novel in the library, one of which, a YA novel called "The Boy Who Couldn't Die" will be reviewed here later. How do I have all these crazy buckets of time to read an review? Well, I'm graduating from my MLS program and don't have to read 300 pages of articles a week or write any assignments for class. Free to review what I want!
So here's my lastest review of one of my favorite books in one of my favorite genres.

The zombiepocalypse is no laughing matter. But Mel Brooks' son Max brings all the humanity, sadness, horror, and yes, even humor as can be found. As promised it is a "transcribed" series of different experiences from different perspectives and places around the world. In addition to being a great story it shows as much thought as the "Zombie Survival Handbook" in how to battle such a menace should the this tragedy become reality. My favorite story was the French catacombs with all the spookiness around, followed quickly by the story of a Japanese Otaku (outsider) who finally got off the internet and found himself surrounded by the undead. All in all a fantastic read. The book also does a great job of taking one character, one story and then circling back around to that character as the book goes on. Basically the book takes us through 10-20 characters all over the world in their fight for survival when the outbreaks first start, when full on zombie war is waging and we're losing, the turning of the tides, and obviously we both begin and end after WWZ. This book is great if you are a member of an Undead Survival Society. Personally I'm in the Zombie Squad. But even if you aren't there are plenty of other elements in this fast paced and engaging read to get the lovers of war stories, horror, histories, anthropology, or well-written fiction involved.


Warning; This book contains scenes of graphic horror and violence. May keep you up at night.

Readalike.org

So, my time in library school is drawing to a close and I am reflecting on what classes have taught me the most that I'm actually going to use. Readers' Advisory is one of those classes (do you see this blog? what do you think I'm trying to do here? oh yeah.)
I just wanted to highlight a resource that I currently take a lot of advantage of, partially because I'm a contributor, but also because I know that in addition to reviews, booklists, and bookmarks there is also a comprehensive list of other readers advisory resources by genre. Joyce Saricks even sent the creator and maintainer of this website an email commending the work. I'll put the link on the "links list" as well, but for general purposes, let's just note that readalike.org is a good place to go for all your SLIS reading group and other readers' advisory needs.