Penguin Girl

Oh how spoiled I am having complete run of the Uni library system. It sort of makes me happy that my program is not yet in full swing so I will have some extra time to play and read. While doing research for a paper last term I ventured into the Fine Arts library to look into some journals which were not accessible online and a few other resources. While there, I found this wonderful journal, Textile History which is published by Maney.

In Volume 37, Number 1 (May 2006), starting on page 38 there was a delightful article “A City in Search of Yarn: The Journal of Edward Taylor of Norwich, 1817″ by Gillian Cookson. I had said when the semester resumed I would read this article. Wow! I wish I could go to the archives of the Norfolk Record Office and read through all of it. I have a weakness for journals, and this was such as delight as it also includes several drawings by Mr Taylor of Halifax and other locales. If you can get your hands on a copy of this journal, I highly recommend it! (I can’t provide it due to copyright restrictions).

Volume 37, Number 2 (November 2006), starting on page 149 has an article “Knitting, Autonomy and Identity: The Role of Hand-Knitting in the Construction of Women’s Sense of Self in an Island Community, Shetland c. 1850-2000” by Lynn Abrams. Once I read it I’ll let you know my thoughts!

I read a ton, I think that may have been established here. :p In addition to all the books, most of which come from the library due to budget and space restrictions these days, I have subscriptions to more magazines and newspapers than I can possibly read. I’ve been slowly catching up on the backlog. I am also a member of the IEEE, with membership in the Computer Society, SSIT, and WIE. All of these give me even more to read. I was recently reading the January issue (Vol. 40, No. 1) of Computer and inside there were two articles which intrigued me, An Information Avalanche by Vinton G. Cerf and The Computing Profession and Higher Education by Neville Holmes. Mr Cerf’s abstract neatly sums things up, “we must harness the Internet’s energy before the information it has unleashed buries us”. Mr Holmes further reminds us that “the computing profession needs to focus on working with other professions”. True. True.

…

I finished a bunch of books this past week. They were Stacks books, but not my stacks, sadly. I don’t think I’ll succeed in finishing my challenge before the end of January, but by cleaning out these library books, I hope to have made a good start.

I read a bunch of buzz-word books: Ready for Anything by David Allen, a Harvard Business School “Pocket Mentor” Managing Time, Greg Brue’s Six Sigma for Small Business. Well, here is a Dilbert on 6 sigma, which pretty much summed up my impressions of lots of these things. What bothers me about these programs (and many other things in life) is when people just accept them and apply them without thinking if they really are the best thing out there for them. I think I’ll leave the rest of my thoughts for a Thursday tools post (perhaps this week, perhaps next). I’ll preview by saying I am now looking at some of this in a new light.

The last group of books deal with magic. Most of my fantasy reading lately has had strong female characters and some use of Magic. I was quite clueless on this subject and last October I picked up The Holy Book of Women’s Mysteries: Feminist Witchcraft, Goddess Rituals, Spellcasting and Other Womanly Arts … Complete In One VolumeBy Zsuzsanna Budapest and Fairy Godfather: Straparola, Venice, and the Fairy Tale Tradition By Ruth B. Bottigheimer. I won’t pretend that I grokked all of either of these books as the subject matter in both (feminist spirituality and Straparola, Italian literature, Fairy Tales) is quite new to me, but wow. I think that Z Budapest presented a very good introduction to the Dianic Tradition. I definitely think that much of my recent reading makes more sense now. The Straparola work was a random volume pulled from the Uni stacks and I forget exactly what led me there, except I think it was in doing some NaNoWriMo research I wanted to learn more about Fairy Tales. For those who don’t know (and I didn’t until I read this volume), Straparola is famous for Puss in Boots among a few other tales. It was interesting and once I clear my to-read shelf I’ll allow myself back in the stacks for more random fun. (Maybe I really should go to library school. *sigh*) A friend, L, alerted me that Aerie: Book Four of the Dragon Jousters by Mercedes Lackey was published and available at her library system. I started haunting several branches of mine and on Wednesday came home with my Friday night read. It was good. I’m sad the series is over, and it ended differently than I expected. I was about to write that I wonder what she’ll write next and I went to her website and discovered this. I guess it means I should really read Men of Tomorrow : Geeks, Gangsters, and the Birth of the Comic Book by Gerard Jones and charge up my iPod. ;)