Okay, so obviously I went wrong somewhere.  Here's where: I did not anticipate a)Brian Elliott imploding in goal for the Blues and their lack of defensive energy and b) the fact that Philadelphia wouldn't be able to put together anything resembling defense when they needed to.  So, moving on to the conference finals: In the East: New York Rangers vs. New Jersey Devils Don't expect this to be a

I didn't know whether to make this make sense or be a rant of the brief not variety, but here it is in probably a form of both. I hate Amazon's "is this review helpful" button.  The answer should be a simple "yes" or "no" response, but the politics involved go well beyond that.  The question really ought to be "do you agree with this review."  As a long-time victim of the "no" response to

It's time for another really sporadic and seemingly out of nowhere blog post.  Yeah, I know I forget about this thing.  But here it is: NHL playoffs.  And I'm excited. Why? Because, despite the Bruins dropping out early and my general disappointment that Minnesota imploded somewhere around the All-Star break and never got it back together enough to even qualify, there's still some crazy

Yes, it's that time of year again, when books that people don't want you to read are read and much discussed.  So, here's the question for week: what exactly is censorship and how does it affect you? The short answer to the censorship question is that it is anything that someone does not want someone else to have access to.  Granted there are sensible uses to this, but usually on the individual

I'm really good at neglecting my blogs lately.  At any rate, I had a good excuse in the last several months.  I was super busy with work and trying to pack for a move half way across the country for graduate school.  Now that I'm moved in and have started classes, I figure I should actually try to update from time to time.  So, neglected blogs, I apologize.  I shall endeavor to do better in the

Oscar Wilde wrote "The truth is rarely simple and never pure.  Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility!" in his play The Importance of Being Earnest.  Strange, then, that I should come across these words in the midst of an ongoing argument taking over the interwebs - one that is pulling people from publishing, writing, librarianship, and

Aghhh!  Okay, so I spaced again.  (Yes, for *counts on fingers* 6 months.)  But they've been busy.  Reading and working and reading some more and working a whole lot more and mowing lawns and taking naps.  Okay, no excuse. Point is, I'm going to graduate school!  yayness. And once there, I do sincerely hope to continue to upkeep this here blog much better.  Oddly I'm going to turn it into

So, I totally meant to keep a running log of my busy month, but that just hasn't happened.  All my free time has been spent either trying not to go insane or figuring out my characters' motivations (one of which still eludes me).  And considering I just inked the last words of the novel, "In the end, Angela would forever regret turning back one last time," it's a bit odd I still don't entirely

Whoa, it's officially National Novel Writing Month for me as I post this.  Where did October (and the rest of the year for that matter) go?  Curiosity of Curiosities.  Anyway, NaNoWriMo: the month in which many crazy people including myself do something immensely insane and let the majority of their free time be chewed up in the massive time suck that is trying to write a somewhat coherent

Rude People . . . Seriously. Rude! Okay, point made.  I don't like rude people and most others don't either, even if they are occasionally one.  So, when I find myself appreciated, like I did several weeks back, I take that to heart.  It's oddly easy to shrug off the rudeness these days.  We are all in so much of a hurry that it hardly seems to matter that one of us has to put up with that

Here's how it's done: Fiction author last name, author first name, title Nonfiction Dewey Decimal Number (nothing before something, i.e. 954 before 954.1 before 954.1073), author last name, author first name, title Possible Variations author last name, author first name, series number before title (Ex. Stine, R.L.  The Beast, Goosebumps #1 then #2 . . . Ski Trip) author last name, author

Lately I find myself once again having to defend the graphic novel and explain that "novel" implies some sort of literary value. Thus, it follows, "graphic novel" also does not equate to "comic book." Now, there might be a few books that can qualify as both and graphic novels certainly owe something to the comic book formate (especially since publishers have piggybacked on the comic format by

I'm always amazed by how messy things get in just a day or two.  It feels like every time I come in I have to clean up the same sections and read through them.  Because there's books everywhere and out of order.  And I can't do it all on my own, but no one else seems to want to organize it all or at least run through and straighten a few bookshelves.  Maybe I'm just a tiny bit of a neat freak. 

Besides working in a library, I also work retail and see a lot of money some days.  And the tighter the economy, the more people are either looking to save or spend less when they purchase something.  This has been evident in the number of wrinkly, pocket lint covered bills of small denominations that can be seen more and more lately.  Some people are just sloppy like that, but, more and more,

To sum up the article "Our Public Library Lifeline Is Fraying. We'll Be Sorry When it Snaps" by Art Brodsky  for the Huffington Post, libraries are essential but budget cuts are killing them and you'll regret it if you don't try to save this valuable community asset. Now to the nitty gritty. Internet access is what everything comes down to.  Politicians like to pull money away from libraries

I love marketing events at the library. Okay, not really. It's a hassle. The local paper's almost never give us good space for articles and most people just say, "When is it? Oh, can't come, sorry." Or they say they'll come and not show up.Less is more.Seriously, the less effort we put in lately, the more people come. We had several recent author visits. Besides the one that just generally

First off, I would just like to say how little I think of the Twilight books in terms of writing. Terrible, terrible, and, oh yes, more terrible (though they did get a little better as they went, but not much). Secondly, I would just like to say how much I think of the Twilight books in terms of getting people to read. Utterly brilliant. Thirdly, I would just like to say how much I miss the

This is, like, blog number four. I need to stop creating blogs. But one's for book reviews. One's for my poetry (terrible and otherwise) and this one may end up being totally unrelated. Who knows. But I do plan to talk about library things.Like shelving books.I've been reading through the nonfiction shelves (at the small library I work in; which means there are more books than you might