chronicles of narnia

I read The Chronicles of Narnia to my son, over the course of the last year or so. We have the one volume, paperback version, illustrated by Pauline Baynes.

It is well known that the Chronicles are morality stories for children based both on the Christian bible and a romantic system of justice where the power of God is enforced by the sword, in hands of children, hand picked by the Son of God to root out evil. The seed of which was let loose into the world by the same God.

Lots of parallels and allegory here, but buried in escapist fun for kids. The stories are dream-inspiring, and in lots of ways dream-fulfilling because of their common basis in our real world. Lewis makes his Narnia accessible to children in the way Lewis Carroll did with Wonderland, or J. M. Barrie did for Neverland, but with a difference; Narnia has a realness, a seriousness to it, more like Tolkien's Middle-earth.

But Narnia is unique. Narnia is both accessible and 'real' but what I think really connects Narnia with it's readers, is how children are not only welcomed, but embraced, heralded, included, and indeed, relied upon to bring about real change by the adults they interact with in Narnia. And not only adults, but God himself! Kids in Narnia are respected, trusted, confident and brave. They have human failings, that any child can relate to, but work through them, and in the end, triumph.

What child, no matter their age, wouldn't be smitten. And ready to give themselves to Aslan.

Reading the Chronicles was like grandmother's cooking. I loved it.

niall de buitlear

I'm delighted to make the following correction. A week or so ago I wrote about found bookmarks and mentioned an exhibit by Irish artist Niall de Buitlear. I'm very happy to report that this exhibit is currently underway at the National Library of Ireland and runs until the end of October.

I would like to thank Niall de Buitlear for commenting on my entry and pointing out my error, and I apologize for the confusion. I found the listing at the library's website, not under current events, but in the archive. I should have read more closely.

So anyone who is interested, you still have an opportunity to see this intriguing exhibit made up of small pieces of peoples lives, left in the books they read. You can find all of the correct information at Niall de Buitlear's web site by clicking here.

de Buitlear's Found Bookmark Project is part of a larger, twenty-one location exhibition put on by the Douglas Hyde Gallery, called Preponderance of the Small, which features work by young artists in Ireland.

Cheers to Niall de Buitlear. Go see his show!

john adams - ii

I finished John Adams last night after work. I thought it was great. This book isn't a page turner; I didn't find this book taking over my life and squeezing out all my spare time, as some books do, but the story was very gratifying in any case.

Abigail Adams, by Benjamin Blythe, 1766

I wrote about this book about a week ago, and talked about how the story was fleshed out using all the different source materials the author could find. In the acknowledgments at the end of the book, McCullough states that the Adamses left behind more personal, written material than any of their contemporaries. Adams loved books, and he also marked in them in the margins. Treating the written word more like a conversation with the author, he would respond to the authors statements with his pen in the margins. McCullough says one book has over 12,000 words in the margins!

The other thing I felt strongly, was how the personal correspondence and diary entries, grounded Adams for me. I was delighted to read, near the end of the book, that others felt this way. After witnessing the re-acquaintance of his grand aunt, late in life, with her old friend, Adams, Josiah Quincy wrote, "It is a surprise to find a great personage so simple, so perfectly natural, so thoroughly human."

I've included the pastel of Abigail Adams done just after they were married, by a Salem artist, because she figures so greatly in the story and in Adams' life. She's his anchor, and his greatest friend. She was smart, well read, opinionated, funny, strong willed, and helped to guide Adams when he got caught up emotionally in an issue.

If you have any interest in the way the United States struggled for independence, and then struggled to stay that way, or about the men and women who worked so hard for it, I can't recommend this book enough. I learned more than all of my American History classes together, and had fun doing it. Read this book.

dragon tattoo

I finished The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo a little while ago, before I began my month-long slog through John Adams. I've been reading a lot of crime/mystery/suspense drama in the last year. My wife loves the genre and she reads really fast, so there are lots of books to choose from. Because I've read so many of them, they have a certain sameness to them. Similar to watching a TV series: you get comfortable with the characters. Writers know this of course and characters are written into series all the time. The sameness I'm talking about, is from author to author, and character to character. They all have similarities that tend to bubble up when reading lots of books like this. I often feel that they are are part of some super-series.

Stieg Larsson's characters were refreshing for me because they broke that mold. The writing is strong, and face-paced. Which for me means

nela

I went to the New England Library Association conference this past weekend in Hartford, CT. My office had a display and we were down there meeting the folks and letting them know what we do. As an exhibitor myself, I'm not sure the goodies that folks like booksellers put out for their potential clients, mainly librarians, are up for grabs, but I did mosey on up to a few and snagged some prime bookmarks, like this one.

Zeus, according to the text on the reverse, is one of the topics covered in "The Lincoln Library of Greek & Roman Mythology", which this bookmark is advertising. The Lincoln Library sells reference materials to schools and libraries. Bookmarks seem like a natural advertising tool for them.

The NELA conference brings lots of librarians and related professionals together to learn about whats new and see the new products available for library service. We were one of four architects with displays up during the conference. Most of us design types know each other, and so its also a chance for us to catch up and see what the competition is working on.

American Library Association ALA:Midwinter is coming up in January 2010 in Boston this year, so that's close for us. I hope to see you there!

weird book room

The American Libraries Direct newsletter is usually full of all kinds of fun stuff in their 'Seen Online' section, and this week doesn't disappoint. The Weird Book Room at the online bookstore AbeBooks.com is a gem for the secret reader in all of us. We've all seen funky book titles at yard sales (tag sale or garage sale, if you're more than 30 miles from me), library weeding sales and the local Salvation Army store. Books that makes you say things like, "I should really write that book I've been thinking about," and, "How do things like this get published?".

Its so great to look at title after title of the craziest books out there. And yes, you can buy them! Where else are you going to find "Why Do I Vomit?", "A History of Orgies", "Help! A Bear is Eating Me!", "Is your Dog Gay?" or "The Big Book of Lesbian Horse Stories" all in one place?

Thanks to AbeBooks for providing this much-needed community service.

john adams - i

So I'm reading John Adams, and I've been pounding through it for weeks. That's not to say I'm not enjoying it, because I am, but the book is dense. I haven't read a lot of biography, so I'm out of my element, but McCullough has shown me a founding father in a way that's accessible, real and human.

This story of Adams' live is amazing as a history lesson, but his personal thoughts, interests and feelings layer the story and give it depth. McCullough uses personal correspondence and journal entries from not only Adams, but his wife Abigail, his friends, neighbors, and contemporaries, which help us see the mind of the man. But it doesn't stop there, the history is there, not only in the emerging America, but in Europe. Details from local politics, competing and sometimes warring foreign governments, news outlets of the day, and even the private thoughts of his adversaries, help fill in the history to create an amazingly rich description of Adams, the world he lived in, and what he did to make America what it is today.

I'm about three-quarters through, but I wanted to get my thoughts down. More later.

russian bookmarks

This blog has caused my interest in bookmarks to escalate in recent weeks, and I find myself blabbing about it and boring my friends with things about my grandmother's book and my small but fun bookmark collection. So I'm boring a co-worker about this and she tells me she has a link for me and gives me this: the Bookmark Collection of the Library of the Urals. I don't speak Russian, and maybe you don't either, so if you're interested, this is what I did.

I went to Yahoo BabelFish and pasted in the web address, chose "Russian to English" from the pull down menu and hit the translate button. Boom. Crazy, BabelFish translation of very cool Russian bookmark site. When you click on the links for "Skin" (leather) and "Tree" (wood bookmarks) you're taken to the sub-sections, and each subsequent page is also translated. [Sweet.]

Thanks to Natalie for the link. She sent me three more that I haven't even looked at yet!

found bookmarks

One of my favorite types of bookmark is the found bookmark, which is to say that the marker itself wasn't originally intended to serve as a bookmark, but was conscripted to perform the function. Items include anything and everything available, ranging from ticket stubs, to business card, to gum wrappers. Anything but a dog ear.

This found bookmark is a recent one of mine from a trip this past summer to New York. Its a ticket stub from the ferry from Battery Park to Ellis Island and Liberty Island. The ticket was a small little bit torn from the end, and the stub is this long, thin strip of heavy paper, whose proportions seemed to have been designed for the specific purpose of being a found bookmark. That may have been the case when