Now it seems I am in danger of becoming addicted to the Wikipedia edit! I thought I would just check to see what the articles about some of the towns I've lived in look like and found something to fix. I've lived in Rosebud, Alberta on two separate occasions, it's only an hour from Calgary and has a dinner theatre, Rosebud Theatre, as well as Rosebud School of the Arts for theatre studies. I attended the school for a year a few years ago and it was a wonderful experience. It's also a wonderful place to visit, a tiny and very friendly hamlet in a beautiful valley, a great escape from the city. The theatre there is very family friendly, with a lot of comedies and musicals.
That aside, I found that the wikipedia article for Rosebud Theatre had the 2009 season of plays, so I updated it with the information for their 2010 season, found on their website. They're going to be performing a musical version of The Secret Garden this Christmas, which is one of my favourite books, so I may go!
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Wikipedia 2.0
Oh gosh. After years of trusting Wikipedia (to a certain extent at least), I have at last found a flaw and corrected it! Whew. My heart beat a bit more wildly there.
I was feeling a bit down about this assignment, given that there are many people better informed than me on many of my favourite topics (such as Jane Austen or Marcel Proust). But a little random browsing for the name of the Hawaiian dude who did a beautiful version of 'Over the Rainbow' with the ukulele (turns out his name is Israel Kamakawiwo'ole) brought me to something to edit. Not an error, but information that was incomplete!
It turns out that under cover versions of 'Over the Rainbow' they were missing one... by Rufus Wainwright on his Judy Garland tribute album, Rufus Does Judy at Carnegie Hall.
I feel I have pulled off some kind of caper. (And it was disturbingly easy.)
I was feeling a bit down about this assignment, given that there are many people better informed than me on many of my favourite topics (such as Jane Austen or Marcel Proust). But a little random browsing for the name of the Hawaiian dude who did a beautiful version of 'Over the Rainbow' with the ukulele (turns out his name is Israel Kamakawiwo'ole) brought me to something to edit. Not an error, but information that was incomplete!
It turns out that under cover versions of 'Over the Rainbow' they were missing one... by Rufus Wainwright on his Judy Garland tribute album, Rufus Does Judy at Carnegie Hall.
I feel I have pulled off some kind of caper. (And it was disturbingly easy.)
Monday, April 5, 2010
City of Copycats
So, onto those teen novels I said I'd review. I decided a while back to pick a teen book to present at a library workshop. However, I've found it slightly harder to find one I actually wanted to read! I first looked for a contemporary light teen romance, but none of the books made me want to read them. I also tried a few popular historical teen novels, like The Luxe and A Great and Terrible Beauty. Not so much in wanting to read those all the way through either.
Then I had a better idea: why not go with the most popular teen genre, ie the sparkly paranormal romance / urban fantasy type of series that aren't quite as popular as Twilight or Harry Potter, so we at the information desk haven't heard of them that excessively, but are still doing quite well on the shelf. I've seen the covers prominently displayed in the bookstores, so with a little help from Amazon and NoveList, I cherry picked a few.
Based on what was available in my library's paperback spinners, I ended up starting with City of Bones, the first in Cassandra Clare's Mortal Instruments series. It had a captivating first few pages and I read it in less than 24 hours, putting off getting a doctor ordered x-ray until I was finished. So obviously, the characters and plot are intriuging.
What started to become an problem was that well... various aspects of the story began to seem a little too familiar. There are characters in the story known as the Silent Brothers, who have no eyes, mutilated faces and lips sewn together. They don't talk obviously, but communicate through thoughts. Needless to say they are described as creepy. The problem is that if you have watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer all the way through to season 7 (my geekiness, let me show it to you), you might wonder if these guys sound suspciously like the Bringers, with oh what was that? No eyes, very creepy, can't talk, communicate through thoughts. Right.
I was annoyed but still carried on because oh, the quips were still good, the action still fairly strong. But. I was noticing a Harry Potter-esque vibe to the whole story, which at first was good, because it's nice to find another strong and interesting easy read type book from time to time. But then there was this development in the story, where the characters are looking for a certain object. And then it gets a little too Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone the way they find said object inside a painting (not a mirror, but still).
Whatever, I said. There was a fairly pointless and plot-less battle scene between vampires and werewolves, which seemed to be there only because vampires and werewolves are popular at the moment, they were not the main types of people in the story. (Personally, I go in for werewolves more than vampires, but that's largely due to Benicio Del Toro in The Wolfman. Ahem.) And for a story where there's supposed to be a big quest on to save some thing or person or other, it took a lot of time to get going with said quest, with a lot of pointless and annoying incidences that didn't seem to make sense or further the story.
Finally, I reached the end. And with it came a massive Star Wars stolen plot twist that threw me to the edge of rage. I was angry, as I very rarely am angry, at the end of a book. I went to Amazon to check the reviews and see if anyone else had noticed all this blatant stealing of ideas. Yes, people had and they mentioned many more that I hadn't even noticed. It turns out more of the supposedly interesting and unique ideas in this book were taken from other books.
And the best part? Cassandra Clare started as a fanfiction author for guess what... Harry Potter. (Fanfiction is anyone writing a story about characters or situations from a book or movie. If it's based off a classic novel, like Wide Sargasso Sea is on Jane Eyre, then sometimes it gets published. See also: a lot of Jane Austen 'sequels' or spinoffs that are often not that great. If it's based off something with a current copyright, it stays on the internet. Here is a popular site should you desire to read or write some. Because fanfiction is mostly not-for-profit and because the people reading it want to continue to live in the fictional world of the book or movie, the standard for the writing is well, not that high and it is also mostly praised without critique. And a lot of teens online read this because it's based off their favourite stories.)
When I read this, it made sense. The story is somehow addictive despite its flaws, but there still remains that smug undertone of I can do whatever I want with this story, steal from other stories, and people will like it because wow, I have one attractive character (originally based off of Draco Malfoy and from there on modified enough to pass as 'original'), a story with some angsty action, a few good lines and an internet following. This is likely why she was published in the end, but the lack of professionalism in the writing of something that was published (there are various editing errors as well, people mention things and then later claim never to have heard of it before, that were also annoying and could have been fixed easily), really really bothered me.
All that aside, City of Bones remains very readable. (In the end I even caved and picked up the next book in the series when I saw it at the library, but got distracted part way through by Vampire Academy and from that on to poetry, Proust and Jane Austen...) But there are better books out there! Like Scott Westerfeld's Uglies, which I also read and which is amazing.
(To its credit, the second book in the Mortal Instruments series, City of Ashes, doesn't seem to be as badly written, but nevertheless, I don't feel too compelled to finish it.)
So there it is, the strong and bitterly nerdy feelings a teen novel can generate!
Then I had a better idea: why not go with the most popular teen genre, ie the sparkly paranormal romance / urban fantasy type of series that aren't quite as popular as Twilight or Harry Potter, so we at the information desk haven't heard of them that excessively, but are still doing quite well on the shelf. I've seen the covers prominently displayed in the bookstores, so with a little help from Amazon and NoveList, I cherry picked a few.
Based on what was available in my library's paperback spinners, I ended up starting with City of Bones, the first in Cassandra Clare's Mortal Instruments series. It had a captivating first few pages and I read it in less than 24 hours, putting off getting a doctor ordered x-ray until I was finished. So obviously, the characters and plot are intriuging.
What started to become an problem was that well... various aspects of the story began to seem a little too familiar. There are characters in the story known as the Silent Brothers, who have no eyes, mutilated faces and lips sewn together. They don't talk obviously, but communicate through thoughts. Needless to say they are described as creepy. The problem is that if you have watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer all the way through to season 7 (my geekiness, let me show it to you), you might wonder if these guys sound suspciously like the Bringers, with oh what was that? No eyes, very creepy, can't talk, communicate through thoughts. Right.
I was annoyed but still carried on because oh, the quips were still good, the action still fairly strong. But. I was noticing a Harry Potter-esque vibe to the whole story, which at first was good, because it's nice to find another strong and interesting easy read type book from time to time. But then there was this development in the story, where the characters are looking for a certain object. And then it gets a little too Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone the way they find said object inside a painting (not a mirror, but still).
Whatever, I said. There was a fairly pointless and plot-less battle scene between vampires and werewolves, which seemed to be there only because vampires and werewolves are popular at the moment, they were not the main types of people in the story. (Personally, I go in for werewolves more than vampires, but that's largely due to Benicio Del Toro in The Wolfman. Ahem.) And for a story where there's supposed to be a big quest on to save some thing or person or other, it took a lot of time to get going with said quest, with a lot of pointless and annoying incidences that didn't seem to make sense or further the story.
Finally, I reached the end. And with it came a massive Star Wars stolen plot twist that threw me to the edge of rage. I was angry, as I very rarely am angry, at the end of a book. I went to Amazon to check the reviews and see if anyone else had noticed all this blatant stealing of ideas. Yes, people had and they mentioned many more that I hadn't even noticed. It turns out more of the supposedly interesting and unique ideas in this book were taken from other books.
And the best part? Cassandra Clare started as a fanfiction author for guess what... Harry Potter. (Fanfiction is anyone writing a story about characters or situations from a book or movie. If it's based off a classic novel, like Wide Sargasso Sea is on Jane Eyre, then sometimes it gets published. See also: a lot of Jane Austen 'sequels' or spinoffs that are often not that great. If it's based off something with a current copyright, it stays on the internet. Here is a popular site should you desire to read or write some. Because fanfiction is mostly not-for-profit and because the people reading it want to continue to live in the fictional world of the book or movie, the standard for the writing is well, not that high and it is also mostly praised without critique. And a lot of teens online read this because it's based off their favourite stories.)
When I read this, it made sense. The story is somehow addictive despite its flaws, but there still remains that smug undertone of I can do whatever I want with this story, steal from other stories, and people will like it because wow, I have one attractive character (originally based off of Draco Malfoy and from there on modified enough to pass as 'original'), a story with some angsty action, a few good lines and an internet following. This is likely why she was published in the end, but the lack of professionalism in the writing of something that was published (there are various editing errors as well, people mention things and then later claim never to have heard of it before, that were also annoying and could have been fixed easily), really really bothered me.
All that aside, City of Bones remains very readable. (In the end I even caved and picked up the next book in the series when I saw it at the library, but got distracted part way through by Vampire Academy and from that on to poetry, Proust and Jane Austen...) But there are better books out there! Like Scott Westerfeld's Uglies, which I also read and which is amazing.
(To its credit, the second book in the Mortal Instruments series, City of Ashes, doesn't seem to be as badly written, but nevertheless, I don't feel too compelled to finish it.)
So there it is, the strong and bitterly nerdy feelings a teen novel can generate!
Saturday, April 3, 2010
CPL 2.0: Delicious
I first heard of Delicious a few years ago on the internet as a place where people stored links to their favourite fanfiction. Needless to say, I was somewhat surprised when the Calgary Public Library also started using it to store all of its Best Websites!
But this is what's great about Delicious: anyone can store anything and share it with anyone else. I am most familiar using tags (or 'labels', as I see blogger calls them) on blog entries. It works the same way as on Delicious, except you can only search the tags used within your own blog, to find all the entries tagged with one particular keyword, you can't search across all of blogger to find everyone who's ever used the same tag!
This is where Delicious is really helpful and interesting. You not only get to save your own bookmarks (which is all I thought it was used for when I first heard of it), you can browse everyone else's too. (You can also save yours as private if you really don't want your friends finding out you like fanfiction...)
I've looked through the Help section of Delicious, just to understand how it works. Some of the finer points on tag options are a bit confusing, but other than that, it is helpful to figure out how it all works. I still can't find the display options link though! I've found it fairly straight forward to use when helping a patron, the Canadian Citizenship tag bundle in particular! A few of the links I wouldn't go to Delicious to find, such as The Alberta Library Online, as it's quicker just to google it.
Overall, Delicious is well organized (oh how I like alphabetical lists!), yet open for every user's input. I will likely create my own account there at some point.
ps: You can tag/label your posts here, as I've already mentioned, with cpl 2.0 so that it's easier for the inspecting powers that be to find them. This is useful if you're blogging about a variety of things and want to find every post on a particular topic later. Just a thought!
But this is what's great about Delicious: anyone can store anything and share it with anyone else. I am most familiar using tags (or 'labels', as I see blogger calls them) on blog entries. It works the same way as on Delicious, except you can only search the tags used within your own blog, to find all the entries tagged with one particular keyword, you can't search across all of blogger to find everyone who's ever used the same tag!
This is where Delicious is really helpful and interesting. You not only get to save your own bookmarks (which is all I thought it was used for when I first heard of it), you can browse everyone else's too. (You can also save yours as private if you really don't want your friends finding out you like fanfiction...)
I've looked through the Help section of Delicious, just to understand how it works. Some of the finer points on tag options are a bit confusing, but other than that, it is helpful to figure out how it all works. I still can't find the display options link though! I've found it fairly straight forward to use when helping a patron, the Canadian Citizenship tag bundle in particular! A few of the links I wouldn't go to Delicious to find, such as The Alberta Library Online, as it's quicker just to google it.
Overall, Delicious is well organized (oh how I like alphabetical lists!), yet open for every user's input. I will likely create my own account there at some point.
ps: You can tag/label your posts here, as I've already mentioned, with cpl 2.0 so that it's easier for the inspecting powers that be to find them. This is useful if you're blogging about a variety of things and want to find every post on a particular topic later. Just a thought!
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