Library blogosphere roundup
An accumulation of links from my library-related Bloglines folder…
Via The Shifted Librarian, a fabulous use of podcasting: Who Said? A Literature Game, in which you listen to a snippet of a novel read out loud and then guess the novel, the author, and the character. (I’ve been listening to previous snippets, and was chuffed to recognize a passage from Mrs. Dalloway.) For everyone who likes fiction, mystery quotations, being read to, or podcasts.
Dorothea Salo offers meta-librarian-blog commentary on academic librarian bloggers and why defining "academic librarian blogger" as "one who posts on one topic, all the time" is both silly and riddled with gender issues. As a grab-bag blogger myself, I tend to agree. And belated congratulations on the awesome new job, Dorothea!
Lorcan Dempsey posts about Nick Hornby on the subject of how our books reveal us, and on how that connects with social networking via book recommendations. Which reminded me of a favorite Borges poem:
Mis libros (que no saben que yo existo)
son tan parte de mí como este rostro
de sienes grises y de grises ojos
que vanamente busco en los cristales
y que recorro con la mano cóncava.
Non sin alguna lógica amargura
pienso que las palabras esenciales
que me expresan están en esas hojas
que no saben quién soy, no en las que he escrito.
Mejor así. Las voces de los muertos
me dirán para siempre.[My books (which do not know that I exist) / are as much part of me as is this face, / the temples gone to gray and the eyes gray, / the face I vainly look for in the mirror, / tracing its outline with a concave hand. / Not without understandable bitterness, / I feel now that the quintessential words / expressing me are in those very pages / which do not know me, not in those I have written. / It is better so. The voices of the dead / will speak to me for ever.]
— Jorge Luis Borges (tr. Alastair Reid)
(I confess to being a compulsive scrutinizer of other people’s bookshelves whenever I first visit their houses, so I like the idea of using tastes in books to connect kindred spirits — though I’m leery of the connection with Amazon on account of not wanting to give the massive commercial retailers too much detailed information about myself.)
excited to know that podcast! Hours of entertainment to be had.
…and I love that poem, too. 🙂
I’m a big fan of Borges, and I’ve never read that poem. I’m sure it’s going to be one of my favorites for the rest of my life.
I, too, love to look at other peoples book collections. Lately, though, I’ve been accosted by various people who want me TO GET RID OF BOOKS. (“They take up so much space!”)
To be a bit melodramatic about it (and in keeping with the Borges poem), it feels to me as if they are asking me to commit suicide.
(Marvin the Martian voice) It makes me very angry.