Thirteen reasons why not?

A young life, full of promise, ended much too soon. By suicide. Teen suicide. The third leading cause of death among young people aged 15 to 24.

The story is Jay Asher's Thirteen reasons why. High school student Hannah Baker, bright, attractive, someone you'd like to be around. Only she's not there anymore. But she's left behind a little going-away present for some of those she's left behind. A set of cassette tapes naming thirteen people who, in Hannah's mind, played a part in her decision to end her life. Clay, one of the thirteen people, receives the tapes in the mail unexpectedly, and spends a torturous night listening to her voice and visiting places in their town where significant (to Hannah) events had transpired. Part of his motivation in listening to the tapes is fear. If he doesn't listen to the tapes, then send them on to the person whose "story" follows his, Hannah has arranged for another set of the tapes to be made public. Clay is also motivated to find out why Hannah feels he's partly responsible for her decision to kill herself.

There's no question Hannah went through some pretty torturous stuff after transferring to her new school. Being the new kid is never easy but things start out fairly well, with friendships developing with a some other people her age. But then it starts to go badly when she finds herself first objectified, then betrayed, then lied about, spied on, belittled, misunderstood, and then attends the teen party from hell where one unconscious girl is raped and another teen under the influence has a minor accident that eventually winds up costing another teen his life.

But Clay isn't really the cause of any of the bad things that happen to her. His behavior is pretty exemplary all around-- aside from being a little too smitten with Hannah to actually approach her, which, he finds out on the tapes, would have been quite welcome by Hannah. But she never allowed herself to communicate that to him. Indeed, that's the story's weakness. The fact that much of what she relates was misinformation about her. But it could also be viewed as a lack of communication. By her. She's only now taking the opportunity to clear the air after she's already dead (or soon will be) and the information can't save her. It can only hurt others. Her story is no longer a tragedy, it's a revenge fantasy. And it's a horrible thing she does to herself and to the others in her tragic tale-- however deserving of blame they may be. At some point she very deliberately made the decision to end her own life. She even goes to a school counselor to, supposedly, talk about some things that are bothering her. Then stops the exchange before the counselor can begin to understand her problems. Rather than using a service that was designed to help students in pain, she warped the process, going through the motions, but withholding any information that would have revealed the depths of her despair and instead leaves after saying that the exchange was helpful. And Clay? The good guy? The one she really liked and who liked her? She literally pushed him away.

This is not to belittle her pain but don't be fooled into assuming that Hannah is the tragic victim. She's not an innocent who at some point was driven to the (wrong) decision that her life wasn't worth living and that the human beings, flawed as they (and we) occasionally must be, are deserving of the punishment she metes out from beyond the grave.

Clay is the victim here. His perspective of events is often at odds with what Hannah is relating. But he'll get to find out something than Hannah will never know: that high school is something you can survive.

500 Essential Graphic novels (Review)

Gene Kannenberg, Jr. has compiled a book containing what he calls the 500 essential graphic novels : the ultimate guide. Now that's the sort of inflated title that's just begging to be punctured once or twice, but with 500 titles there's bound to be some undiscovered or forgotten gems.

And the book is pretty nicely organized, with graphic novels being divided into ten different genres: Adventure, Non-fiction, Crime and mystery, Fantasy, General fiction, Horror, Humor, Science fiction, Superheroes, and War, and with a two-page introduction to each genre. Most sections will begin with what Kannenberg calls a "top ten essential section," usually featuring a picture of the book cover and usually a page or a couple of panels from the interior of the work. Rounding out each section are some works not quite good enough for the top ten. Each title lists writers, artists, publisher and most recent year of publication, and even an ISBN! Each also has a star rating from one to five and an age rating (A for all, 12+, 15+ or 18+). There's also a plot summary and review for each. Each title also includes a short list of "See also" and "Further reading" titles. For each title there's also a number that appears on the top left hand corner of each title that shows a number over the number 500 -- as in number 18 or whatever of 500 essential graphic novels, sort of a non-ranking in the list that's not much use at all.

In the back there are indexes (or indices) with page listings for writers, artists, and titles. (Be careful with those page listings, however. Don't confuse them with the rank out of 500 numbers) There's also a separate list of publishers showing which titles they produced. They even have an index for the age ratings! Too bad they didn't think to include a separate index for the star ratings.

Whew! That's a lot of information. Spread out over 527 pages, that's really a lot. True, the graphics cover up a lot of that page space. But the book is printed on trade paperback size pages (about 7 inches tall by 5 inches wide) so it doesn't take much text to fill out the book. And the graphic novel page samples are really hard to read when they're reduced down enough to fit. So that tends to detract from the overall appeal of the book.

As for the titles, well, it's a pretty nice mix. Most of the ones you'd expect to find are here: Maus, Contract with God, Watchmen, Barefoot Gen, along with some surprises like Cheech Wizard, Sam and Max Surfin' the highway, The Amazing Mr. Pleebus and Indian summer. Lots of comic strips make appearances too, including The Complete Calvin and Hobbes, Liberty Meadows, and The complete Peanuts. No Doonesbury though.

As might be expected, the collection does tend to focus pretty heavily on American publications. Japan does have a few titles represented (their English adaptations, anyway). And the same goes for the Europeans. Maybe that's a minor quibble. And while the Superheroes don't predominate, their section does have over sixty titles listed, while War lists just 28.

But there's plenty to peruse. I developed quite a list of titles I need to seek out, and more than a few fond memories of past enjoyable reads. That's part of the fun of these greatest hits type lists. Flipping through pages and something catches your eye and you remember reading that back when it first came out and suddenly realize you're just grinning from ear to ear.

If you're not too familiar with graphic novels, this would be a very useful introduction to some excellent examples of the genre. And if you're really lucky, you'll be able to borrow a lot of these from your local library. How superheroic is that?

Not Your Parents' Batman

Frank Miller, along with artist Jim Lee, recently added a new Batman story to his catalog that began with The Dark Knight Returns (has it really been over 20 years?) and the latest entry, All-Star Batman & Robin the Boy Wonder Vol. 1, seems to be generating as much controversy as his first take on the caped crusader.

The new story unfolds around Dick Grayson, an extremely gifted young aerialist who performs with his parents. After a performance in Gotham, both his parents are felled by an assassin's bullets while taking their bows, leaving the newly orphaned youth in shock. He's quickly hustled out of the arena by the police who, in an exchange with reporter Vicki Vale, who witnessed the performance and subsequent murder with Bruce Wayne and diagnoses the youth's shock, is back-handed by the police as Grayson is hustled into a waiting police car.

It turns out that the Batman has "had his eye" on Dick Grayson for some time. Batman soon grabs the boy from the cops and takes him to the Batcave where he announces that's Grayson has been drafted into a "war." But he has some choices to make, and the Batman goes through some self-doubt as he agonizes over whether the boy is too young. There's also their obvious discomfort with each other-- Grayson because he thinks the man is a bit crazed, the Batman because the youth is an unknown, and the Batman has grown used to working alone. But there's also the dark symmetry that bind the two in Batman's eyes, since he was also present on the night years earlier when a criminal killed both his parents before his eyes. He's faced what Dick Grayson is going through. He knows what effect that kind of event had on another young boy. Will the Batman try to turn the young orphan into a clone of himself, or will he use his new-found relationship with another to help him find his own humanity?

Part of the appeal (for me, anyway) to the story is the exploration of the Batman's relationship with the other members of the Superhero community at this fairly early stage in all their careers. In a huge character twist, Batman has contempt for Superman (Batman is smart enough to figure out Superman's secret identity) and Green Lantern (considered a moron because with the power ring he's been given, Green Lantern creates giant flashlights and brooms, rather than exploiting the full power of the ring as Batman would). There's a new take on Wonder Woman too, who in a very brief appearance comes off as a bit of a man-hater with contempt for the world of men. When the other heroes believe that they should try to contact the Batman and rein in his questionable methods, she suggests they deliver Batman's head to the authorities on a pike.

And then there's Batman's "fling" with the Black Canary, after he aids her in a brutal confrontation with some thugs on the Gotham docks.

Make no mistake, the violence is even more extreme than was depicted in The Dark Knight Returns. Criminals aren't merely brought to justice, they're brutally punished, with compound fractures and elbows or kicks to the head doled out indiscriminately. And, this being Gotham City, where there's only one good cop (Jim Gordon, in his pre-commissioner days), the rest of the police are fair game for the Batman's over-the-top violence as well. As the Black Canary suggests to him after their dockside tryst, it wouldn't hurt him to actually talk to another human being once in a while.

Social Networking and Libraries

Still playing catch-up. (Who am I kidding? You don't catch up when things have slid this far)

So, I had seen what the assignment was about, social networks, and felt a great deal of reluctance. I've got a profile on Facebook (hounded into it by my sister who was having such a good time reading the stuff friends of her kids were posting on their pages and looking at the pictures they added) Especially the profile of her nephew (her husband's sister's oldest son), who's a Lieutenant serving in Iraq.

Well, the whole thing struck me as pretty creepy. More voyeuristic, I guess, as I didn't want to be poking members of a younger generation or gifting them, or telling them how cute they looked in that picture from the school play. My oldest nephew had some pictures from college plays posted by friends and he had other photos he and his new wife had taken on their honeymoon (in Ireland) which were kind of neat. But the nephew in Iraq wasn't someone I felt comfortable "friending" or whatever just because we're not that close and, given the situation he's living in, I don't want to add to his distractions. I did ask my nephew for Christmas present ideas, but we wound up corresponding by email instead. I did flip through my niece's list of books once (she reads a lot! I know because that's how I found out Facebook doesn't have the 200 item limit that LibraryThing puts on free accounts!) just to see if I could get some ideas for Christmas presents for her. But she's all over the map so I did like I usually do and guessed.

So I haven't really been back. I did get a couple of automated email contacts from Facebook, asking me if I'd finished reading a book I mentioned I was reading on my account. I had. Today I revisited my account to see what may have happened. I still have my original three "friends" and a lot of them have friends in common who are candidates to be friends with me, but it isn't gonna happen. But I did let readers of my page know I'd finished reading that book from back then.

Kind of like catching up with my Project Play assignments.

So that brings me to our assignment. (What, I had to dig in the archive to find it? How long have I been blowing this off?) The assignment is to look at how some libraries are using social networking sites using three from a list of sites with a presence on MySpace, how they're "surfacing," reflect on the place of libraries in social networking, and post my thoughts on why or why not I would want to create a MySpace page for my library.

So I looked at pages for LaCrosse, Oshkosh, Winnefox, and Denver. They've got pictures and everything. Including profiles! Well, let me tell you, the Midwest does not look to be making a committed effort at keeping their pages updated. There are some blog updates and some lists of friends/adds, and the occasional list of open hours and Heroes who are "Readers" but so what. And the profiles are just lame. 100 years old, female and doesn't drink or smoke? How endearing! They're getting cursory attention, if that. It stopped being fun for whoever did it and became one more task that got dumped on a back burner. Or abandoned.

Denver (or should I say teen-Denver), by comparison, seems to be kept up. Although I saw they did have their links to teen interests in movies, music, etc. disabled. They should probably take those links off their pages then, don't you think? Their last blog entry is dated February 19, 2008, which isn't as bad as a couple of our Midwest examples, but I don't think they're putting a whole lot of effort into it. They do have a link to their online catalog that's working and some other library type resources. So they do put their library presence online. (Yeah, Winnefox has a link to their catalog too. And a link to AskAway. But theirs is still a lame page)

I'm not sure what "surfacing" means but I think it might be creating a (superficial) presence on a social networking site. I think the Midwest libraries I looked at are doing a poor job. But that's just me. Any effort they made has been more-or-less abandoned.

As for my view on the role of libraries in social networking, I think it's a wasted effort. There needs to be a steady presence and frequent updates, (like a blog!) or you don't attract visitors. And you really can't do the marketing of your services on MySpace that you could do with your own web presence. Getting your "friends" to add a link to your catalog or web page on their "MySpace" pages would be the best you could hope for. Then they could easily place holds while viewing their web pages and the comments (and recommendations) they get from friends. A MeeboMe link from the library, or an AskAway link that they could add to/embed in their personal pages seems like it would be the best you could ask for-- to get your tools where people would be able to most easily access them. But, given the context of where they'd be located (a social site catering to younger users who are probably not doing homework (let alone research) and the types of questions you'd wind up getting would probably be just as effectively answered with a Magic 8-Ball.

Which I guess kind of sums up how I feel about whether or not I think we should set up a MySpace page for my library. We already have a pretty good web presence and get occasional comments from some of our users. But it is labor intensive. Which means there has to be staff investment, and not just money for staff, but staff who are also committed to giving the extra effort this kind of marketing needs. That's not easy to get. Or maintain. How easy would it be to duplicate some of this effort on a social networking site? Judging by the timely updates that some of the sites I looked at don't provide, I don't think we'd be getting enough positive feedback from an online networking site to justify the effort. I think one of the most satisfying feelings a library with a MySpace page could probably get would be the feeling of accomplishment they'd get when they finally took their page down.

But that's just my opinion. Your comments, as always, are welcome.

Wikipedia : the missing manual

This isn't a book review-- more of a heads-up to those still interested to wikis in general, and Wikipedia in particular. Despite the ease of use that supposedly makes wikis so useful, there's definitely a learning curve when it comes to messing with Wikipedia. It isn't about how to use it so much as it's about how to add to it.

This 477-page illustrated volume will give you an idea of what you need to know to post and edit to the world's largest on-line encyclopedia.

And, it's available at your public library. Click here.

Lactose Intolerance

So, I did the minimum this time around. Again.

I had read the short description of the week three offering some time back and I've been rolling my eyes at the thought of this particular assignment ever since. Between Wikis and Google docs and traditional email and the still-very-handy scrap of paper and manual writing implement, I couldn't see a very strong need for these particular Web 2.0 tools.

Plus I saw from our email that more passwords were needed to access the tools for this weeks assignments. And goddess knows I just can't get enough passwords in my life. Let the eye-rolling begin.

Well, Stef's course podcast for this particular lesson seemed to anticipate my reluctance and basically told me (and everyone else, of course) to quit whining and do it.

So I did it.

Using Remember the Milk, I was able to send the list a reminder and add a couple of comments. But I couldn't figure out how to add my phone number to the Jott list. And the Jott FAQ page wasn't working when I poked around for help.

Nevertheless, I now feel I can whine freely.

It's not that it's a useless tool or that it might not have features that could be exploited successfully given the right needs and environment. I just don't feel any urgency to add another layer of technology to the list tools we've already been given. The calendar features and reminders on Remember the Milk do give it some features that other tools lack (particularly the connectivity and sharing features), but I didn't familiarize myself with them because, frankly, I don't see myself using this particular tool past this assignment.

The same holds true for Jott. Maybe more so. I've mentioned before that I don't own a cell phone. That in itself removes the most useful feature that Jott possesses, the ability to convert a voice message to text while you're away from your desk/email/internet connection. Granted, this would be a useful tool to have if I was that mobile (I'm not) and constantly creating to-do lists (I don't) and adding to them on the fly (yeah, right). [BTW, does anyone know if it's true, as stated in the Wikipedia article, that "speech is then transcribed to text using a combination of software and of human transcribers?" Definitely a few steps back from the cutting edge of technology if true]

And another thing. Don't tools like Blackberrys and iPhones have a lot of these capabilities and features built-in? It seems as if Remember the Milk and Jott are somewhat cheap "kludgy" alternatives to some other existing (and perhaps more powerful) tools. If I needed this kind of connectivity, wouldn't it be to my benefit to supply myself with the type of tools that would work more seamlessly?

So, for me, neither of these tools seems destined to become part of my particular toolbox. I think they're remarkable, in their way, but given the wealth of tools available, these two don't provide this particular lack-0f-power-user with any compelling reasons to make them a part of my personal or work tools.

Feel free to persuade me that I'm wrong though.

Google Docs

Still catching up.

So I've been using Google mail for some time and have had some experience (but not much) with Google Docs based on that. I admit I haven't given it the attention it probably deserves after seeing some of the formating that others have done on our Project Play assignment. It always just seemed kind of clunky/unwieldy when I worked with it. There definitely seem to be more features than I noticed in the past. Maybe I just noticed more since they're so eerily similar to what we use when editing in Blogger. (Wonder why that is?) I think part of my problem is that my monitor is widescreen and that makes everything seem a little "off" if that makes sense. Like I'm still used to layouts existing in "portrait" format instead of "landscape."

Anyway.

I liked the possibilities that were demonstrated in the class assignments. I was really impressed with the gardening spreadsheet layout. Although that was more of a wiki with numbers. It was really well done. Excellent formatting. One of our condo association members recently set up a mailing list for all our members using Google groups and I'd like to start using the documents feature for treasurers reports and spreadsheets. (I'm the treasurer-- God help us.) I'm going to have to spend more time figuring out the formating that was used on our spreadsheet assignment. I definitely see some possibilities there.

I've mentioned during our assignment on wikis that our department has lots of documentation, some of which I've already got as Microsoft Word documents. Instead of having them spread across individual hard drives with somewhat spotty records when it comes to keeping updates current (ahem. who me?) we could probably port them over to Google docs and keep everything in one place, with revisions open to everyone who accesses those particular documents. But I envision lots of set-up work involved in making such a transition though. Not something I want to tackle in addition to all the regular work.

Which, admittedly, is an extremely short-sighted way to look at it.

As for using Google Docs in the library, I'll just echo what other people have said and say that it's got some real possibilities. (Good luck training the masses, though.) We've gotten pretty used to having Microsoft Office available on most of our machines for so long that I imagine it will take us quite a while to come to the realization that we could probably live without that particular piece of software. That may be why MSFT stock hasn't gone up in years.

But, that makes speedy and reliable internet connections even more critical. And Google could quickly turn into the most hated corporation in the world-- now that Microsoft is becoming less of "the only game in town." Not that that should bother libraries. Unless Google starts charging for access. Or making their ads more intrusive. Or something even more nefarious.

But, that's a worry for another time. For the moment, Google Docs seems to be a rich, full-featured software suite that's familiar/easy, free and convenient. What's not to love?

Stay tuned.

Your comments, as always, are welcome.