Book A Month Challenge: Changing Times

Phillips, Julie. James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2006.

In recent months, I've begun to notice that the movie studios are creating different trailers and ads for the same film, each with a different emphasis. So we have the "comedy" trailer and the "chick flick" trailer. I even once saw "chick flick" and "action" trailers for a film, which was a bit of a stretch. This biography of Alice Sheldon could easily be promoted the same way, but more honestly. One could write the proto-feminist review, the Lesbian/gender identify review, or the literary biography review. In keeping with January's theme of “Time ”, I read the biography of someone who lived through much of an extraordinary century and saw amazing changes in world around her.

Sheldon led an adventurous life from the very beginning: when she was six, her parents took her with them on safari to unexplored Africa. She was literally one of the first white people the Kikuyu tribe of Kenya saw. She was one of the first WAC officers in World War II, interpreting spy-plane photos of enemy territory, and she worked briefly for the newly founded CIA. She earned a PhD in Psychology. Her accomplishments were also regularly dismissed because she was a woman:

When [she] got an all-time high grade on a qualifying test, the county agricultural agent who wrote to congratulate her pointed out, "Your husband didn't do bad either. I expect Mr Sheldon could have really beat you but wanted to be real gallant and diplomatic and let his wife win (p. 151).

She saw the birth of modern feminism and corresponded closely with Joanna Russ, but she watched the movement from the outside and did not benefit from it. She was working as a man at the time (that's the "Lesbian/gender identity" review breaking through).

Her experience among the Kikuyu in 1922 informs the headlines we've been seeing out of Kenya for the past month. Imagine living in central Africa and being transported from an isolated village that has seen no change in hundreds of years into the 21st century in just three generations.

Phillips has written a well researched biography with extensive, though unobtrusive, notes. This is not a "popular" biography, but an academic one. The early chapters are focused primarily on Sheldon's parents, and are slow-going, but they lay important groundwork for later discussion of Sheldon's relationship with her mother, who was famous in her own right.

The back matter includes a bibliography of Sheldon's works, the notes, a bibliography of published sources, and an index. Unfortunately, the index is not as strong as I would like: there are no entries for "Army" or "Intelligence" (the latter is listed under "World War II, intelligence work in"), nor is there a cross reference from "WAAC" or "WAC" to "Women's Auxiliary Army Corps" or "Women's Army Corps". The index does include entries for significant text in the notes, which are indicated by italic page numbers. (This use of italics is not explained in the index.)

For most readers, these issues are minor and will not detract from the reading. For an academic studying Sheldon or the science fiction of the 1970s and early '80s, they will make referring to the text more challenging, though.

How to Consume More Books This Year

The personal productivity blog Lifehack.org has published some tips for squeezing more reading into a year, Literary Gluttony. It starts with a list of why one might want to read more, including "knowledge", "keeping your mind sharp", and, interestingly, "pride".

The tips for reading more are mostly sensible, although I would argue about "speed reading" as a first thing to do. I also doubt that any but the most committed of readers will be following the author's lead by getting up at 5:30 to squeeze in reading time before work.

Nothing on the list will be too surprising to a librarian or regular reader, but this looks like a good list for those people who feel that they should read more, but want some tips for how to fit it in.

Happy 2008 Public Domain Day

Canada is part of the "Life+50" copyright club, so the published works by anybody who died in 1957 fell into the public domain as of today, January 1, 2008. Highlights include Dorothy Sayers, John Von Neumann, and Lord Dunsany.

The complete list also reports on who's entered the public domain in the "Life+70" countries and some of the strange situations related to the United States and government publications in some Commonwealth countries.

The Librarian's Christmas

Of everybody at the family Christmas this year, I, the librarian, got the fewest books. Why this happened is pretty obvious after some thought: while wandering around the bookstore, everybody was picking up things they thought I might like and then putting them back down, afraid I might already have read them.

How easy it is to buy books for somebody is a function of not just how well you know them, but also how much they read. If a friend doesn't read, then it's easy: don't buy them books. If a friend reads a middling amount, and one knows them reasonably well, then it's also easy: buy them something that meshes well with their known reading habits, and they probably haven't already read it, but will like it.

For the voracious and broadly read reader, even her partner may have problems buying books. Of course, if you buy the voracious reader a book she's already read, then it's just a very bulky gift card, since it's easy enough to return the book and exchange it for something else, but it would be better to just buy something suitable.

In general, I'm not a big fan of "wish lists". At some level, I like the idea of finding something that the recipient will like, but didn't know about, or didn't ask for. But for certain people this can be difficult. Of course, there's also the problem of alerting one's friends and family to the existence of the wish list, which just feels tacky. So, while I do have an Amazon(.ca) wish list, nobody knew about it.

I guess I just have to start buying stuff for myself.

Darn.

My Misspent Youth

Most people, when talking about their misspent youths describe the wild and crazy things that they did and probably shouldn't have. Mine, on the other hand, was mind numbingly boring, for no good reason except, of course, that I was a totally introverted geek.

In May 1984 I was a freshman at the University of Waterloo when the Clash were touring and played the auditorium at the university.

I didn't go.

Grammar peeve of the day

There is a difference between "latter" and "last" people! One chooses the latter of two options and the last of more than two options:

Fred was given the choice of chocolate or vanilla ice cream and he prefered the latter. When choosing between chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry, he always picked the last.

Unfortunately, some people get it wrong:

Note that Acrobat Standard and Acrobat Professional are not the same as Acrobat Reader, the latter[sic] being a free product with limited functions.

I feel much better now.

Decoding the "Library Pilot Project"

In chemical engineering, a "pilot project" is an attempt to move a process off the lab bench and into a small set-up that will allow the researchers to find out if their new process will actually work in a commercial setup, without the risk of a full-scale industrial plant. They regularly demonstrate that the original process, which worked well in the lab, doesn't scale up. That is, they fail.

In the library setting, people regularly talk about "pilot projects". In general, this seems to be code for "We're going to do this, but if we just tell staff that, they'll get upset." At least that's the way some staff seem to interpret such. This interpretation is reinforced by staff who react to any unsuccessful attempt to provide a new service as a total failure that throws the entire library systems into disrespect in the eyes of the user community.

It seems that the way around this for new web services is to label them as "beta", since "users are familiar with 'betas' from Google, so we can change it any way we want without going back to the committee for approval." Whatever we call it, we need to encourage trials, and we need to be honest about what happens when something doesn't work: we fire the... I mean, we learn from the experience and try to improve the services we continue based on what we have learned.