Pink Me

The 80's Music Nerd Dewey Challenge!

Let's take a dance break, library people!

The rules are simple:

Shelve the following ten songs under their proper Dewey class number. Provide a short explanation and/or example to support your classification.

Here's an example:

 

"Karma Chameleon," Culture Club, 1983.

Boy that's tough to watch. We have learned a thing or two about lip-synching since those days, haven't we? Anyway. Where would you put this song if you were shelving it in the library?

ANSWER
Class number: 294.5 (Hinduism)
Alternate class: 597.596 (Chameleons)

That's right! Although if there were a call number for 'there's individuality, and then there's looking like a large painted rock festooned with prayer flags' I would also accept that as an answer.

We're cataloging mainly the content of the song itself, so in this case a classification of 976.81, which is where you'd put a book about Mississippi River steamboats, would get you points for having sat through the video, but would not technically be correct.

Of course, nobody's keeping score, so who cares?!

You may ask why we're doing this. Part of it is me getting used to a new library. Once you've worked in a library for a while, your body remembers where, for example, schizophrenia is without your brain having to get involved. You don't have to think, "616 is diseases, 616.8 is mental disorders... oh yeah schizophrenia is somewhere in 616.85." I couldn't find pregnancy the other day - what the hell, pregnancy? How can I not walk straight to those books? So I'm quizzing myself.

And lately I have found myself singing in my head while I shelve - and it's all 80's music! I swear, I am not one of those people who only likes the music of her youth. I like Mika. I like Ben, l'oncle Soul. But when I'm shelving replacement copies of Dean Koontz, I find myself humming "Mr. Odd" by The Jazz Butcher. Shifting romance, I'm singing "I see you crying and I want to kill your friends," from "Oblivious" by Aztec Camera. And when I'm putting our copies of The Walking Dead in order, I've got Shriekback in my head. Everybody's happy when the dead come home.

So put your nerd hats on and let's enjoy some early MTV and some big big hair...

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Flies Again by Frank Cottrell Boyce - review - aka an excuse to go off about Ian Fleming, which I have been wanting to do for a long time

It's not all that often somebody tries to write a sequel to a classic like this. It's a really big risk - tough to avoid looking like you're just totally crassly trying to cash in on the love and affection for the original book... or else you just look like you're writing fanfic. I'm sure there are any number of "Arwen and Aragorn's Honeymoon" manuscripts languishing in the depths of your laptop's hard drive. And rightly so. Do not print that thing out. Ever.

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline - review

Do you know what a lich is? If someone taunts you with, "Answer the question, Claire," who are you being compared to? (Extra points: what's the question?) What will an oscillation overthruster allow you to do? And have you ever found yourself in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike?

A stray facetious comment worked its way into a discussion about the popularity of teen fiction among adult readers a while ago. "What about YA novels that are written just for adults?" I'm paraphrasing, I don't remember the exact wording. Just an offhand jokey comment, right?

But then I read Ready Player One. Ready Player One is a virtual reality adventure with a teen protagonist, a love interest, and a wing man. Our isolated, socially awkward hero must work his way through riddles and duels to win keys, open gates, and sort of save the world; and along the way he will develop leadership skills, learn to work with others, and listen to his instincts. Classic YA plotline.

But this book is not for teens.

Mister Death's Blue-Eyed Girls by Mary Downing Hahn - review

I am violating my own rule here. My rule is I don't review books by people I know well enough to hug.

I know Mary Hahn well enough to hug, and to kiss on the cheek. Both of which things I did last time I saw her, the day after I finished reading this book. I think you would, too.

Mary's an old friend of my parents - I think her first husband and my dad went to college together? Maybe mom was a bridesmaid? She and my mother were pregnant with their first children at the same time, and compared notes. Some time after those girls (one of them me) were born, she and my parents more or less lost touch.

Mary started working as a school librarian, and in the mid-1970's started writing novels for children. Mysteries. Ghost stories. And though most of these stories stay well within the range of "comfortably spooky" - excellent choices for middle-grade readers who crave just enough chill to keep them turning pages, but not enough to keep them up at night - that's still thirty-some years' worth of haunted houses and restless spirits, guilt, revenge, and loss.

And now we know why.

Praise the things I can't forget - books about Bigfoot!

I lead a pretty prosaic life. The biggest, hairiest, most mysterious creature in my life (no cracks about library customers, please, esteemed co-workers!) is our big orange cat, Babe. Named for Babe the Blue Ox, not Babe Didrickson Zaharias or Babe the Gallant Pig. But as mystifying as Babe's behavior sometimes is, he is depressingly accessible. He's no cryptid, in other words.

And sometimes you just need a little mystery. Ergo, Bigfoot...

 

So Ashley Spires put out this absolutely cute picture book a couple months ago, Larf, that is all about being alone - and that's ok - and reaching out to someone - which is also ok - but being nervous about it - understandable, and also ok - but then meeting someone nice anyway. Which is way ok.

Love Larf. Love Ashley Spires! Ashley Spires, in case you didn't realize, which I didn't, is the person responsible for that farting dreamer of a housecat, Binky (Binky the Space Cat). Every one of those books is a charmer, as is Larf. Larf is, contrary to what I think are most people's expectations about Sasquatches, rather a neat person. He folds his laundry and washes his dishes after he uses them. He wears a neat red scarf. He lives alone but he's not lonely. Not super lonely anyway.

Video reviews PART DEUX: Invisible Sun, Fake Mustache, The Drowned Vault, and The Familiars

The mountain range of books on our coffee table is a constantly shifting pile of bait for my boys. I bring books home from the library every day that I work - sometimes they place requests, but more often I just snag books that I think they'll like or that I am interested in looking at for this blog. The "leave it out casually and they will pick it up" strategy has been praised by many parents, and even endorsed by Judy Blume, and I can vouch for it as well.

Not so say there haven't been some hiccups, as when I found ten-year-old Milo reading Railsea by China Miéville, which I had pretty much brought home for myself. He is also a big David Macinnis Gill fan now, thanks to this practice.