A few favorite books
Submitted by openstacks on Wed, 06/30/2004 - 10:26
Tags:
- The Magus (John Fowles)
- Neuromancer (William Gibson)
- Snow Crash (Neal Stephenson)
- Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
- 1984 (George Orwell)
- The Master and Margarita (Bulgakov)
- Portnoy's Complaint (Philip Roth)
- Jitterbug Perfume (Tom Robbins)
I plan to read 'Catch-22' as soon as possible.
Which genre is it?
What's the best element of the book?
Interesting questions. As far as genres go, it defies the common categories of mystery, sci-fi, etc. I'd say it's a war-themed satire. Laugh out loud funny at times, but also poignantly unsettling in its relentless attack on war, bureaucracy and government.
I've been listening to your podcast, though I have no interest or experience* with the library system besides checking out materials. A podcast gives you an entirely new, more complete picture of a person, and makes you read their text web content in an entirely different light. It's wonderful.
* I worked as the assistant automation coordinator my local library at age 17, but all that meant is that all the broken computers from all the branches came to me and I fixed them, so I wasn't involved with the 'library system' at all.
You just made my day. While I had hoped to turn a number of my podcast listeners on to listology, I had never consider the possibility that the opposite would happen.
You might also enjoy my other podcast at Preserves, Jellies and Jams. It's mostly selected live music cuts from my collection.
It's unfortunate that I moved to an area without broadband around the same time I discovered podcasts. As I said before, there's something wonderful about the human voice that is so much more personal and communicating than text. Aware of the cheese involved, I might say podcasts make the web come alive! :-) Of course, text must always remain because it is searchable and much easier to skim/edit/etc. and archive (due to file size). I would hate to use a Listology where lists and comments and news items were all just MP3 links, even if I had instaplay super-broadband (and Jim had unlimited bandwidth!).
I'm having a blast reading your posts in my mind with your voice speaking the words. :-) I do the same with John's voice for The Movie Blog (the only other podcast I'm currently following). One of these days we'll have software that will create custom voiceprints by recording an individual's voice reading a script for half an hour. That voiceprint will be distributable (over ultra-broadband, of course), and we'll be able to easily apply our favorite voiceprints to text and have text read to us in different voices. So, I could actually hear your written words in your voice - as they sometimes do with voiceover in movies when a character reads a letter from someone else. But I'd have most lengthy texts read to me by Kevin Conroy's voiceprint.
Returning to your podcast, specifically: as usual, I'm ignorant of the universes beyond my own. I had no idea there was such a massive online community network of librarians (or, library-scientists, or DDS masters, or... what?), but it makes sense that those who work with networked & freely shared knowledge would flock to the Internet. It's also fun to see that you follow such a wealth of library-specific sites and news sources and blogs like I do with my passions (like movies, technology, etc.).
Glad to have made your day, though I had no expectation of doing so. Just goes to show what an innocent little comment will do: [transmogrify to... preschooler!] *sniff sniff* How come nobody likes my poem? </manipulative jackass>
I've just added The Movie Blog to my aggie. I didn't know they were doing audio. I hope they keep it up. How come you don't also listen to Reel Reviews? Michael Geoghegan has much (much!) higher production values, although it's a pure monologue, for better or worse.
Your poem is lovely. :-|
The Movie Blog is the most dialup friendly podcast I've found, because they encode at such low bitrates that it is still FM radio quality, but 20 minutes is 2.5 MB. I'll check out Reel Reviews and perhaps some other podcasts on your own list when I drive out to the library and use their broadband again (I do that once a week).
I also like The Movie Blog's podcast because they are hilarious, even if they're not very knowledgeable - for every podcast, I have to leave a couple info corrections in the comments, but they never even acknowledge my corrections :-)