The Mountaineer Reading Room

Here’s a little video describing WorldCat’s nice citation tool.  You’ll need to set up a free account with them, but it’s worth the effort.  Visit the RHS Library Citations page for more help.

“Fiction is a simulation that runs on the software of our minds.”

Keith Oatley and his colleagues at the University of Toronto have performed some research that delves into an interesting question: Why read books?  Well, it appears that there’s now some scientific evidence that fiction–more so than other forms of reading–helps one learn to better “negotiate the complexities of the social world.”  In other words, by identifying with the characters in a story, the reader gains experience empathizing with others, solving social problems and gaining broader social perspective in a virtual setting.

I’m reminded of a quote from the movie Shadowlands that has stuck with me: “we read so we know we’re not alone.”  OK, maybe that’s a paraphrase (it’s been a few years), but it gets to the heart of the matter.

Perhaps I should watch Shadowlands again–it’s a good movie.

So, is it just a coincidence that the rise of the modern novel occurs just as Englightenment ideas and social innovations really begin take hold in Europe?  Perhaps guys like Cortes and De Soto (I’m currently reading about the Conquistadors) would have been a little easier on the natives had they read a few more novels in their formative years?  Would modern politicians benefit from a rigorous “Great Books” seminar?  If so, any recommendations?

Tracy Warner, longtime editorial page editor of the Wenatchee World, offers some thoughtful commentary on a recent book challenge in Leavenworth, Washington.  A parent felt the the book Alice on Her Way contains an inappropriate level of sexual content and should not have been available for circulation in a middle school library.  In what can best be described as a compromise, the school board agreed with the review committee’s recommendation to keep the book on the shelves “on a restricted basis.”  The parameters of the restriction are not discussed (I assume it involves specific parental consent), but Warner does a good job identifying the challenges  of collection development for young teenagers.  In a world saturated with mixed, hypocritcal, inaccurate, biased and targeted media messages, it’s nice to know that school libraries can still provide a space where kids can reverse the flow and challenge themselves at their own pace and on their own time.

I became cool in the summer of 1984. At least, that’s what I thought. I had an excellent 1981 Chevy Citation to drive around, a pair of vans and an enviable mullet (historical note: the word “mullet” did not exist for another 15 years or so–at the time the haircut was known as “the haircut every guy had”). If only I had known then what I know now: in reality, I was much cooler a couple of years earlier when I spent my summers in my room designing elaborate Dungeons and Dragons adventures. So, I when I heard that the creator of D & D, Gary Gygax, died on March 4 I felt a certain amount of warm nostalgia–and wished I hadn’t tossed all those manuals and little painstakingly painted figurines.

It’s just a good thing I didn’t have an Xbox. I’m not sure I would have completed Middle School.

Science fiction author and visionary human Arthur C. Clarke died last week, just a couple days after I finished off his (and Stephen Baxter’s) Firstborn–the third and last installment of the Time Odyssey series. While I haven’t read all of his work, for years his books and stories have served as a reliable means of escape via plausible scientific speculation. Here’s what we currently have in the RHS Library, but you can bet a few more titles will be finding their way onto our shelves in the coming years

There have been many articles written about Sir Arthur over the last few days, but my favorite is from Alan Boyle’s very cool Cosmic Blog. Apparently, Clarke’s hair will one day be launched to the stars, where it will await an encounter with a species capable of reconstituting Clarke via his DNA. He’d have an interesting story to tell.

At last, the recognition he really deserves.

Jorge Luis Borges is a difficult writer to classify, which, of course, makes him all the more interesting. How best to describe him? Perhaps as an “Anglo-Argentine classicist-inspired fantasy writer with magical realist and science fiction tendencies.” Now Noam Cohen adds cyberpunk and Web 2.0 visionary to the list in this article in the New York Times. You’ll find the collection of short stories mentioned in the article, Labyrinths, in the RHS collection.

Additionally, Borges is the author of my favorite poem, Juan Lopez y John Ward. Here’s my English translation:

Luckily, it was a strange time.

The planet had been divided into different countries,
Each one with its loyalties, dear memories,
An undoubtedly heroic past,
Ancient or recent traditions, rights,
Serious offenses, a peculiar mythology, heroes of bronze,
Anniversaries, demagogues and symbols.

This arbitrary division was favorable to wars.

Lopez was born in the city beside the immobile river;
Ward, in the outskirts of the city through which walked Father Brown.
He had studied Spanish in order to read Quixote.

The other professed a love for Conrad, which had been discovered
In a classroom on Viamonte Street.

They should have been friends, but they saw each other only once face to face,
On some unnecessarily famous islands, and each one of the two
Was Cain, and each one, Abel.

They were buried together. The snow and corruption know them.
The event I refer to happened in a time that we can’t understand.

For some background, read about the Falklands War of 1982, a conflict which Borges famously compared to “two bald men fighting over a comb.”

According to a recent article in the New York Times , a new report released by the National Endowment for the Arts finds that students who read for fun nearly every day performed better on tests than those who reported reading never or hardly at all. Check out the summary of the report or, if you feel like bringing up your scores immediately, read the full report.

Check out this week’s cover story in Newsweek Magazine. Can the Amazon Kindle–and other devices like it–replace the printed book? Are people ready to upgrade from a familiar 500-year-old technology that has served civilization well?

I’m looking forward to trying it out.

Yesterday I wandered through the literature (!) section at Costco and saw a large stack of the aforementioned new book by Sherman Alexie. Submitting to the Costco business model of the impulse purchase, I picked up a copy, planning to read it over the next few days. However, once I got started, I couldn’t put it down and I have to agree with my friend who predicts that this novel will stand up over time as a classic young-adult novel. Actually, it’s more of a semi-fictionalized memoir than a novel–something entirely appropriate in a work that effectively captures the frustration, confusion, humor and beauty of the in-between days of adolescence.

You’ll want to read this one. I might need to go back to Costco for seconds.