This week's Cool Beans

Cool beans that, according to this Detroit Free Press story, "Southwest Solutions is working with the Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit to create 32 affordable units in the abandoned, 80-year-old apartment building -- a cool city effort that really is cool. The project is certain to attract the so-called millennial generation of under-30s who are critical to any city's economic growth."

Cool beans abound at the Turner Prize exhibit. Here are some good stories about it.

A Goth Raggedy Ann and Andy: goth beans!

Cool beans that Liberal finance critic John McCallum referred to Stephen Harper as "the dark Lord Voldemort, sitting on his throne in the PMO" and that Jim Flaherty responded "as the member opposite knows, I am, at best, a mere elf." It is at times that this that I am fiercly proud to be Canadian.

Cool beans that there's going to be a "dark" new TV comedy in Australia called The Librarians. Says one of the co-stars: "You mention a library and everyone has a giggle," Butler says. "Everyone remembers a time when they had a reason for going there. There's something intrinsically funny about them." Hmm. Yes. Watch a promo clip here.

Cool bean that there are people who troll the web and compile lists like this. "Mashable has put together hundreds of lists—useful lists of links, carefully chosen to make you significantly more productive; so many resources, they’re hard to sort through (unless you’ve been through library school). Marketing guru Seth Godin lists them here." There are some very cool tools and resources in here. It's worth checking out.

Cool beans that profs like Michael Wesch are doing creative, visionary and engaging work with their students. Make sure to watch the video. This one's pretty interesting too.

Please stand by

• Please hold.

• All bloggers are currently busy.
  
• All bloggers are also a little tired. And, truth be told, a wee bit peevish. Maybe it's best that you call back another day.
• Your requests for additional entries will be answered in the order in which they were received.
• A blogger will be with you shortly.
• Please click here to select your own "on-hold music." We might suggest "Snow Drift Ambient" or "Accidental Ambient."
  
• We appreciate your patience.
• Please stay on the blog and a blogger will be with you shortly.
  
• Although, really, we should warn you it could be a couple of days so you may want to do some other things. Like laundry. Or maybe turning some of those "files" into recycling? Or maybe now's a good time to clear out those seven-year-old bottles of cilantro lurking in your cupboards.
• Your request for more material is important to us.
• Blog entries may be monitored for quality assurance and training purposes.
  
• Blog entries will not be monitored for training porpoises. We do not think training porpoises is very nice.
• We are experiencing a higher than usual amount of traffic on the overused creative faculities.
  
• Thank you for your patience. All of our bloggers are currently doing laundry, recycling once vital files and ridding their cupboards of bags of 9-year-old cumin purchased in North Carolina and 14 year-old thyme purchased at the SuperSaver in Lincoln Nebraska for 1.89.
  
• A blogger will be with you anon. Hey nonny nonny.
  
• Please do not adjust your blog.
• Thank you.
  

This just in: "an extraordinary act of truffle-squishing"

Visitors to Heidi's Cafe will be dismayed to learn that the man known as the "Willy Wonka" of Britain's chocolatiers has resigned after engaging in an "act of truffle-squishing" in a rival store. According to a story from the Telegraph,
Barry Colenso, the master chocolatier at Thorntons, was "watched by baffled staff as he roamed the Hotel Chocolat store in Nottingham, handling various truffles. When they inspected his handiwork after he left, it was discovered that he had mutilated £63.50's worth of chocolates." A statement issued from Hotel Chocolat declares: "This was an extraordinary act of truffle-squishing. We can only guess at what provoked it." Indeed.

Cool beans from Heidi's Cafe

Inspired by Paul who was inspired by his colleague to pull together some of the things he'd been meaning to blog on for the last week or so., I offer you some cool beans that have been in the cafe's in-box for the past few weeks.


--Cool beans that you can make your own ransom note using random letters from Flickr. Perhaps this is something we could use at our bibliotheque.



--Cool beans that there is a band like Zoltan Kodaly School For Girls who do versions of Kate Bush's "Hounds of Love" and the Kaiser Chief's "I Predict a Riot" on recorders.

--Cool beans that there are sites like this one: "Listen: Making Sense of Sound." It allows us to think about sound in a range of interesting ways. Do check it out.

-- Cool Beans that, inspired by the above site, YouTube lets me watch Spinal Tap's's Listen To the Flower People over and over.


--Cool beans that there are amazing books like Mauve
and An Illuminated Life: Belle da Costa Greene's Journey from Prejudice to Privilege.

--Cool beans that there are amazing tools like Google News and Google News Archives. Ever wonder what was happening a hundred years ago? Google News Archives offers a quick and free overview.

--Cool beans that my friend has an 8 year old who acts out various scenes from the BBC version of Brideshead Revisited.

--Cool beans that the cosmic powers that be invented snuggly cats and kittens like Lily and Gracie and that there are places like this one and this one where you can either adopt one of your very own or contribute to their well-being.

--Cool beans that there are people in this world who make and post things like the Gnarls Barkley Crazy Theremin Jam, crocheted Harry Potter characters, and stylish sweaters for bugs.

-- Cool beans that, in case you were thinking about becoming a pirate, 826 Valencia has a pirate supply shop (of which David Byrne says 'Definitely one of the top five pirate stores I've been to recently') and a Gallery of Signs including signs that would befit any workplace (especially those of the biblio persuasion) such as "Goals for the Voyage," "Have you Got Scurvey" "Guidelines for New Shipmates" ("Bring your own citrus) and "Uses for Lard' (Lard fights, salad dressing ['seasonal'], gift wrap).

--Cool beans too that you can also watch lots of funny videos of "Karl the Puffer Fish." Some cafe patrons might find Karl the Puffer Fish more amusing than others.

--Cool beans that some Chicago Cubs fans remind us that "every team can have a bad century."

--Cool beans that there are cupcakes like these.

--Cool beans that Shoppers Drug Mart gave me 10x the usual Optimum points to purchase a Terry's Chocolate Orange.





--Cool beans that there are great sites like iLike which are "happy to be part of the industry of human happiness." Cool beans too that I am blessed with lovely friends like the one who told me about this site.

Levi Stubbs in Maple Creek, Saskatchewan

Between my iPod and my iTunes at work, it appears that I have about 14 days worth of music: conceivably, between these two devices, I could listen to music nonstop for 14 days and never hear the same song twice. Realistically, with overlap of content on my iTunes and my iPod, it would probably be 10 days of continuous music. Last night I was sitting in my living room in the near dark listening intently to one of the 4 CDs in my fabulous new Motown Box set. I put it on repeat for a few times. It's been a long time since I listened to music this way. I remember losing whole afternoons and evenings listening to one side of a LP over and over again or putting a tape on my walkman on a repeat loop until the batteries wore out. Perhaps I listened to music this way because "repeat" was the path of least resistance. Or, perhaps, because I realized then that there is something incredible to be gained by listening carefully to every note, every tiny drop of sound, and every word of an album. I remember approaching music studiously and working systematically through whole discographies of various bands the way I would eventually work my way through the Heath Anthology of American Literature as I prepared for my PhD candidacy exams. Last night, I found myself summoning that studious frame of mind as I listened to my box set. I began thinking about the Four Tops and remembering the first time I'd ever heard about Levi Stubbs. It was Christmas and my entire family was in a fairly small house in the middle of a wintery prairie expanse. I was in a small room in the basement with family members (who shalll remain nameless) snoring up a storm. In fact, every room in the house was fillled with snoring sleeping people and I was wide awake with nowhere to go and nothing to do. All I could do was lie in my droopy bed and listen to the one tape I'd brought in my walkman: Billy Bragg's 3 song EP with Levi Stubbs's Tears. Perhaps my career in literary scholarship was forged right there as I attempted to figure out exactly what Levi Stubbs' tears had to do with the sad tale Bragg describes. Several decades of literary training later, I have to admit I'm still not sure about the connections. I'd all but forgotten about Levi Stubbs and his tears until last night, when sitting in my living room listening to the Four Tops, I found myself transported back to that little bed in a basement in a house on a frozen prairie thinking about Levi Stubbs and his tears. At the time, I did not know who Levi Stubbs was but it made a sufficient enough impression on me that I looked it up in an actual book when I got back to Edmonton. At the time, I could not have found Detroit on a map unassisted. Nor could I have guessed that one day I would see the Detroit skyline every single day or that I'd cross into Detroit so many times in a month that some US Border Guards would start to say "ballgame?" instead of "citizenships?" the second we pulled up to the US Customs window or that one day I'd not only adore the Four Tops, but I'd stand in Studio A, where Levi Stubbs also stood or that I'd be able to peer into that echo chamber that created that magical Motown sound. I think though that I'd probably be comforted to know that one night 20 years later, I'd also be sitting in the dark, sleepless, listening to music and thinking about Christmas and frozen prairies and Levi Stubbs and his tears.

Holy Cannoli: Who Let the Information Literacy Librarians Out Again?

It started off innocently enough. "How are the cannoli?" I asked N and J at a campus function tonight. As it turns out, the cannoli were pretty tasty but my simple question began a conversation about what exactly cannoli are. Are they that dessert thing filled with lemon or marscapone or ricotta? Or are they a pasta (pronounced, for the record, either pass-ta or pah-sta) filled with cheese or spinach. Or are they both? And, why, in the Godfather did Pete Clemenza say "Leave the gun. Take the cannoli"? Although I said "huh." outloud what I really meant was "I must google cannoli." And so, here I sit, having googled cannoli and finding myself longing to share my new found knowledge with someone. Here's what I learned.

• Cannoli (or the singular cannolo) means “little tube”
• The pasta we were thinking of is cannelloni which means "big pipes." Cannelloni are often called manicotti. However, as Wikipedia notes, "an article in Better Homes and Gardens magazine distinguishes them, using manicotti for noodles rolled diagonally and cannelloni for noodles rolled rectilinearly."
• They originated in Sicily and are associated with the Carnevale
• An anonymous 17th century poet wrote, "Beautiful are the Cannoli of Carnevale,/ No tastier morsel in the world:/Blessed is the money used to buy them"
• Recipes for cannoli are here or you can mail order them from here. You can order the necessary canoli making forms here
• If you live in my fair city, the Italia Bakery makes beauteous little cannoli. They're like little works of art.

I'm still not sure why Pete Clemenza said, "Leave the gun. Take the cannoli." But, given the choice, I'd leave the gun and take the cannoli every time, especially the lemon-filled ones. Capisce?

Information Literacy Librarians on the Loose

Today, I was forced to overhear a long conversation wherein one man described how he was once on a plane and exchanged pleasantries with the man next to him. The man whose voice carried a bit too far asked the man on the plane "So, what do you do?" and the man on the plane said, "well, I invented Velcro." "No way!" said the loud man, "I wear Velcro everyday!" "Indeed," said the man on the plane. "Hmm," thought I. So, tonight I was reading this amazing book _Mauve_ and I stumbled upon a paragraph describing how, in 1956, George de Mestral invented VELCRO (a combination of velour--French for velvet--and crochet-- French for hook). "Hmm," I thought once more.
I resisted but found myself googling "inventor of velcro." Here's what I learned. Velcro came about when George de Mestral went on a walk with his dog and found that his dog's coat and his pants (M de Mestral's pants, not the dog's) were covered with cockleburrs. A microscope revealed the hook like structure which inspired Velcro. Voila and zut alors! Moreover, "Did you know," Velcro.com asks, that "Velcro is the name of our companies and is a registered trademark for our products. It is not the generic name of the product that fastens shoes, pockets, and hundreds of other things. That product is generically known as "hook and loop" or "touch fasteners."" Or that "you can't buy a piece of "velcro." But you can purchase all of the VELCRO® brand hook and loop fasteners you need. In fact, we encourage it!
All very interesting. My research also revealed that M. de Mestral was born June 19, 1907 and died February 8, 1990. So, if a 40 year old man met him on a plane, M de Mestral would have to have been pretty old or the man pretty young. I'm still iffy about the whole "I met the inventor of Velcro on the plane' line. Still, it raises some interesting things to think about: was he really sitting next to the inventor of Velcro? Or, is there someone somewhere telling a story about how once he was on a flight and wanted to see if he could convince his neighbour that he was the inventor of Velcro? Finally, does the loud man really wear Velcro everyday? These are mysteries we'll never solve. It does remind me of another time when I was at this same place and a very very drunk man was trying to woo a group of teachers. His story was that he was both a millionaire and the mayor of a small Michigan town (that he named). When the man stumbled away, all three of the teachers said "We are SO going to google that when we get home." I have to admit I did google it too when I got home. He might have been a millionaire but mayor of that small Michigan town, he was not. This is what happens when Information Literacy librarians are at large. Be careful out there. Google might not be your friend after all.

Baseball Bug

I was walking along in Comerica Park yesterday and a woman said "Watch out for the praying mantis!!" I must have looked confused and alarmed (as well one might) because she said, 'No, really. Look!" Sure enough, there was a praying mantis at Comerica Park. I got some photos before a park employee scooped him/ her up and sent him/ her on his/ her merry way. I've never seen a praying mantis before, except for Zorak on Space Ghost. More photos of it on Ye Olde Flickr Site.

8 days, 4 ballgames, 3 parks.

I am indeed behind in my baseball blogs and I'm not sure I'm going to get caught up. But,
baseball wise, it's been a pretty interesting week. On Saturday, D, our friend SI, and I went to see the Brewers at Miller Park in Milwaukee. Miller Park is a very new park that is far from most things and surrounded by expressways. I'm not sure if it was the park, the blowout game, the partly covered ballpark or that S and I hadn't seen each other for 4 years but I found myself becoming less interested in the game and more intrigued by Bernie Brewer and his giant slide, the giant sausage race and the tofu dogs. I left feeling a little underwhelmed. I started wondering if, perhaps, it was not baseball I enjoyed but my Tigers. Can one love a team but not a sport? I was a little worried. By the time D and I arrived at our second game at Wrigley Field, I'd forgotten all about the previous night's game and realized how much the aesthetics of a park can affect the experience of a game . If one believes in the Church of Baseball, Wrigley Field is a veritable temple. There were no mascots or giant slides or racing sausages. Just baseball in its quintessence. It was one of the most perfect afternoons I've ever had.
Two evenings later, we were back in Comerica watching our Tigers. Early last week, the Detroit Free Press ran a story with the headline "Comerica Park's attendance dwindling like Tigers playoff hopes." The story begins, "Comerica Park on Tuesday night reflected a growing sentiment through town that the race was over before it even began. The Tigers' Den had the feel of a mausoleum. The massive pockets of empty seats were more an expression of postseason surrender than kids returning to school." I won't say anything about the playoff hopes since nothing's over until it's over. But I will say that I've been saddened the number of empty seats and by the number of fans who leave part way through. I've not seen so many empty seats since 2005. Yesterday, it was pretty thrilling to see Curtis get the final stolen base he needed to make him the second player in Major League history to collect at least 30 doubles, 20 triples, 20 home runs and 20 stolen bases in a single season. Other than that, yesterday's game was particularly unpleasant. The park was almost deserted by the eighth inning. Still, there were those who stayed despite the 14-7 score. In the final inning, a kid a few rows back cheered on Carlos Guillen and Marcus Thames like we were one hit away from winning the World Series. Then the guy I wrote about before and his friends put on their rally caps and stood and cheered: one of them hopped up and down like the ten-year-old behind us. And then, slowly, we all stood and cheered. We cheered because it is September and because nothing is over until it's over and because they are our Tigers.
Postscript: just after I finished that last sentence, the Tigers were down 4-3 with 2 outs in the bottom of the ninth. Magglio hit a lovely little pop into right field and then Curtis and Placido scored runs to give them a 5-4 victory. See, it's never over til its over.

Man Booker Short List Announced

This year's Booker Short List has just been announced:

Nicola Barker - Darkmans
Anne Enright - The Gathering
*Mohsin Hamid - The Reluctant Fundamentalist
*Lloyd Jones - Mister Pip
*Ian McEwan - On Chesil Beach
Indra Sinha - Animal's People

Read about them here. So far I've only read _On Chesil Beach_ which is nearly note perfect. I'll try to work my way through the list before October 16.

Smocks and Cardies: Biblio Style Wars

The library world's a-buzz with this story out of New Zealand. According to news reports, "style queen Paula Ryan will run a workshop at the national library conference this month, offering tips on how to transform their "conservative and dated image.'" Promotional material for the workshop reads as follows: "Librarians as a profession have a very conservative and dated image: if we want to transform our profession then surely we must start by transforming ourselves."
As a backlash, librarians in Christchurch, NZ have taken to wearing floral smocks. These smocks , which one librarian said made them look like "a comfy, covered armchair", were standard uniform for Canterbury staff in the 1960s.
Ryan responded to the charges of being patronizing by noting "I have never patronised librarians in my entire life." Further, she notes "There is obviously some sensitivity in the profession about stereotypes." "I would expect today many librarians are quirky and left of centre. I suspect that image has long gone," she said.

Baseball Blogs: Catching up, slooowly.

It's been a bad month here at the Cafe for writing. I've been carrying around baseball scorecards with blog notes for several weeks thinking somewhere, somehow I'd find the time to turn notes into blogs. They've been to Algonquin Park, London twice, Chicago and Milwaukee. I think I finally need to admit that a blog for each missed game is probably not in the cards. If I were Don Cherry, I'd say, "let this be a lesson to all you kids out there-- always type up your notes into proper blogs when you get home. Otherwise you've got all these sunscreen smudged notes and no recollection of what they mean." If I were Don Cherry, I'd illustrate my point with a telestrator. And, in so doing, I would have made a very good point about writing and procrastination. But, I am not Don Cherry.

Baseball Blog: Rally Caps

August 8, 2007
Game Time Temperature: 79o
Attendance: 37,777
Winner of the Dunkin' Donuts Race: Biggie Bagel
Final Score: Tampa Bay: 7 Detroit: 1

Leaving the park tonight, I found myself rethinking and unthinking my previous blogs. In a matter of days, I'd seen a stunning victory and a crushing defeat. Last night, we were reminded of the Tigers of last summer: perfect, elegant, and sharp. Tonight, as the park emptied around the 6th inning, we chatted with our fellow season ticket holders and we commented that tonight felt a lot like the Tigers of a few years ago. The exception, I said, was that a few years ago, we would have paid 11.00 for tickets way up there and then migrated down here. By the time the 9th inning rolled around, the sky was dark and the park practically empty. As my father often says (and has proven himself correct many times), it's not over until it's over. It's sobering to look around a dark and empty park to see exactly how few people seem to believe that too. When our section cleared out, I recognized almost everyone who remained. And, though I'd never talked to many of them, I felt like I knew a little something about them from the way they watch baseball. All season, I'd noticed a guy one row up and a bit down from us. He's always there, he watches the game carefully and with an eye for detail. I learn a lot about the game from watching him. Unbeknownst to him I am sure, he has helped me see a great pitch or be alert to an upcoming play. Over the season, I've grown to respect him. At the end of the 8th inning, I was feeling a little disheartened about the team and pretty disappointed in its fans. Sure they were down by six runs but if they load the bases and someone hits one out of the park, they're only down two. At the height of my disillusionment, my accidental baseball tutor in the row ahead of me stood up and my heart sank. "Please, not you too," I thought, "Surely you can't be leaving." And then, he did the most remarkable thing: he took off his ballcap, turned into a rally cap and started to cheer his team on. Suddenly, the park didn't seem that empty anymore.

Baseball Blogs: Who's Your Tiger?

August 7, 2007
Game Time Temperature: 79o
Attendance: 35,288
Winner of the Dunkin' Donuts Race: Cuppie Coffee
Final Score: Detroit 9 Tampa Bay: 6

For some reason, we had exchanged seats for this game and we found ourselves in our former haunts in sections 325-330. As I've noted before, it's a different game up here and I was happy to be back up here and watch the sunset. Up here, I could see a greater swath of fans and I was struck by how many more people were wearing players' shirts. When we first started going, there were a few Youngs and Higginsons. In more recent years, there have been a lot of Rodriguez and Inge shirts but lately there are many more Granderson, Zumaya, Verlander, Sheffield, Ordonez, Rogers and Polanco. I wonder if this is the result of the "who's your Tiger promotion" or just that people are getting really attached to particular players. Lately, the affection people have for players has made it a really energetic place to watch baseball. On Sunday, I had written about how losing might have its own under-rated aesthetic. By the time this game was over and we'd watched the Tigers blow a 4 run lead in the 8th inning and then come back to score three runs to win it, I started rethinking my previous blog. It is a lot more fun to watch a team win. Am I bad person for thinking that?

Will there be Archival Allergens too?

This story appeared in the Globe and Mail today and adds another dimension to the "e-books stink" discussions some of us may or may not have been having of late. According to this story, "Six out of 10 students...preferred buying used textbooks over new or electronic textbooks even though e-books are generally a third less expensive. E-books sales have been slow to take off." A study suggested that "43 percent of students identified smell, either a new or old smell, as the quality they most liked about books as physical objects." And, in an attempt to persuade college students to try e-textbooks, Web site CafeScribe.com on Wednesday said it was launching "the world's first smelly e-book.""CafeScribe Chief Executive Bryce Johnson said that from September the company will send every e-textbook purchaser a scratch and sniff sticker with a musty "old book" smell." Interesting. I do wonder if those of us who use digital archives will be offered a vial of allergens to help replicate the full archival experience of itchy eyes, runny noses and hives. Just thinking about it is making me itchy.

2007 Baseball Blog: August 5, 2007

August 5, 2007
Game Time Temperature: 64o
Attendance: 39,778
Winner of the Dunkin' Donuts Race: Dashing Donut
Final Score: Chicago 3 Detroit 1

In junior high, my friend Elaine and I laughed at a very short-lived colour commentator for the Oilers who declared: "at the end of a hockey game, there's a winner and a loser." And, though we've laughed at that for many years, I'm starting to think he might have been onto something. At the end of every baseball game there is a winner and a loser: there's no such thing as a tie in baseball. Baseball abhors ambiguity: a ball's foul or fair, a pitch is a strike or a ball, you're safe or you're out. Baseball is not a sport of maybes, sort ofs or almosts. You win or you lose. You make the playoffs or you don't.
Almost every day Dale tells me what team has won or lost and how those wins or losses affect the Tigers playoff hopes. It's getting to that point in the season where every game starts to matter. Soon, it will be at that point in the season where every pitch and every at-bat will seem to matter.
Now that wins and losses are really mattering, the mood around the park is changing. At the beginning of the season, people were abuzz with last year's spectacular season and the Tigers certainly gave the impression they could do it all again this year. Making it through to October seemed to be a given for the first few months of the season. Lately, however, doubt is creeping into people's minds again. Was last year a fluke? Are we even going to make it to the playoffs this year? Or, can they pull it all around just like they did last year.
I believe I've written before about how the year I really started to really love the Tigers was the year of their "losingest**" season. Perhaps I felt a certain kinship with them since I too was having my own version of a losingest season. Or perhaps it was because learning to love a team at their worst requires a degree of committment and creativity. When a team's winning, it's easy to find things to love about them. When your team is losing, it takes more effort to find the beauty of it all. As I watched the Tigers attempt a rally yet lose tonight, I started to wonder if there is an aesthetics of loss. Is there perhaps something lovely in a hard-earned loss that we overlook in our hunger for wins? Or, does this kind of thinking mean that I too am losing hope for October? Then again, as the Tim Robbins character said in Bull Durham, "A good friend of mine used to say, 'This is a very simple game. You throw the ball, you catch the ball, you hit the ball. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains.' Think about that for a while." Think about that for a while: I certainly will.

*He also said, rather memorably, "if you don't put the puck in the net, you're not going to score goals." There you go.
**I have to admit, I do like how sports makes up words like "losingest" and how, when you think about it, you'd be hard pressed to find a better word than "losingest." Except maybe embiggens and cromulent.

Holiday hours at the Cafe

Sorry I didn't leave a note before heading out to Algonquin. Like Boris and Natasha, we looked for Moose and Squirrel. A fab time was had by all. Photos on flickr. I am now sitting at home watching the rain pour and pour and pour. Regular cafe hours will resume shortly. Thank you for your patience and patronage.

Hope for all those doctoral procrastinators out there

According to a story from the BBC, "Queen guitarist Brian May has handed in his astronomy PhD thesis - 36 years after abandoning it to join the band." May recently carried out observational work in Tenerife, where he studied the formation of "zodiacal dust clouds." May will defend on 23 August, his spokesman said. The results should be known some time shortly after that date. "If I fail I will fail big time," May said. "It will be a very public failure with all this press."

So, what are you reading?

I'm not sure if I mentioned this in my blog before but in NC I used to have a very lovely, charming colleague who began every conversation with: "Do tell me what you've been reading" rather than "Hello. How are you?" or "Hey. What's up?" He and I had similar tastes in reading and we'd often have conversations by the mailroom or in the hallway about the books we were reading. Sometimes if I read a fantastic book, he'd be the first person I'd tell. If I'd been particularly effusive about a book I enjoyed, the next time I'd see him, he would say, "Ah, Heidi. Now, I read the book you were telling me about..." and then proceed to tell me what he loved about the book too. The remarkable thing about his conversation starter was how few people in our department actually read books for enjoyment. But, of course, I have to admit that I too had a streak of that in me. For most of a decade, I read mostly 18th and 19th century books or, if I did read contemporary fiction, they were set in the the 18th or 19th century so I could justify it as sort of work-like pleasure not actual fun-pleasure. A notable low point was when I brought the Federalist papers to the Outer Banks thinking, "hey, this could be fun beach reading." To my credit, I ended up leaving it in the car. It held a grudge for a few weeks but I took it to a few coffee houses and it forgave me soon enough. Alexander Hamilton was many things: fun summertime beach-readable writer, sadly, was not one of them.
It wasn't until I left the world of literary scholarship that I actually felt I could read and enjoy books as I did before I entered my scholarly career. It's very odd, really, since what propelled me into literary scholarship in the first place was a love for reading and a love for falling in love with books. I've finally got that back now and I won't let go of it again. I've held onto my colleague's recurrent question over the years since, I think, it serves as a reminder that as teachers and scholars we should be excited and curious about reading.
I miss my charming colleague most when I read a fantastic book. If I still worked there, I'd hope to run into him tomorrow so I could tell him how much I loved Ted Bishop's Riding With Rilke: Reflections on Motorcycles and Books. It's funny how often the book you most need to read at a particular time just falls into your lap as if it is seeking you as much as you are unknowingly seeking it. This book sort of fell into my lap a few weeks ago-- though perhaps more accurately, it was placed in my hands by the kind Ted Bishop. There are many wonderful things about this book: his style has a lightness of phrase yet a grounded elegance. There were numerous personal resonances. There were many times when I was sitting on my front porch chuckling aloud and many other times when his turns of phrase made me stop and savour them. I won't say much more than this because I think you should have the joy of traveling its journey and discovering it on your own. I will say this:it's a book that's about the magic of books and reading but it's also a book that reminds one first hand how magical books and reading can be. Get it here and get it now.

Hmmm... tempting tempting tempting

Wow... given that the titles on the spines are respectable Victorian tomes, I could-- perhaps-- justify buying these haunted books for the English collection: "Antique looking books seem perfectly harmless until someone walks by, then the middle book slides out toward the victim as if it will fall from the shelf." This is my favourite part: "Books also emit spooky sounds for a totally haunted effect." Make sure to click on the video.