This is how this works- I ask three questions, and you, Gentle Readers, kindly answer them. And I’ve just copped Miss Manners?!
This is the last day of National Library Week, and I hadn’t mentioned it yet. I’ll get drummed out of the Librarians’ Guild if I don’t. It’s early this year, undoubtedly trying to avoid Holy Week.
I have four, count ’em, four library cards. One’s from my community library, one is an alumni card from my graduate school alma mater, one is from the New York State Library, and the fourth is from the New York Public Library in New York City. Now, given the fact that I live about 150 miles away from New York City, why do I have a card from there? Because it has cool databases. Also because I can: “A Branch Libraries’ card is free to anyone who lives, works, pays property taxes, or attends school in New York State. Others may apply, with payment of a $100 annual fee, for a nonresident library card.”
So, I’d love it if you’d answer these three questions:
1) For what, if anything, do you use the library? Borrow books, videotapes, DVDs? Access databases there? Access databases remotely? Go to events? To read quietly? To people watch?
2) Regardless of where you got it/them, what book(s) have you been reading lately? Which ones, if any, would you recommend? This can include graphic novels, and, since it’s National Poetry Month, even individual poems.
3) Regardless of the source, what books are on your reading list for the rest of the year?
My answers will appear in the answers section.
***
The Peabody Awards, in case you missed them. Love the descriptions, especially for Boston Legal (which I watch regularly) and The Shield (which I see occasionally).
***
“The movie has a jaunty, even merry tone for something so blood-soaked.” You may have to register to see this Washington Post review of Lucky Number Slevin, but this line from Stephen Hunter, “there’s just too much death, it comes too quickly, it has no moral import, it becomes ultimately meaningless”, is enough for me to avoid it when I have only a handful of movies I’ll see this year.