confessions of a southside catatonic chataholic

Hey Ho! A colleague recently left a post-it note on my monitor with the message 'Hey Ho!' across the top. I laughed myself stupid because I knew she meant it as a greeting. Anyone else might have taken it the wrong way :-)

So - blogs/sites of book interest. Ordinarily I bash on and on about the hilarity of Smart Bitches Trashy Books because, let's face it, they are FUNNY in capitals! This post, though, I mention them in passing. A post on their blog called 'DocTurtle Reads Romance' had me in stitches...which led to my heading on over to the blog 'Judge A Book By Its Cover' (belonging to his wife Maughta who is a librarian in a public library) where they, yes, judge books by their covers. I got a huge giggle out of DocTurtle's situation. He wrote a post (Titter-worthy Titling Automaton) referring to formulaic romance novel titles and how if you've seen one you've seen them all. He also created his own Random Romance Novel Title Generator (which I've had a play with and my title was 'The Assyrian Heir's Tasty Marquesa' - sounds a bit cannibalistic heh). Sarah et al, from Smart Bitches Trashy Books, issued a challenge to DocTurtle - to read Sex, Straight Up by Kathleen O'Reilly, and then a Georgette Heyer novel. Doc accepted their challenge and has since been live blogging his commentary on O'Reilly's book - and I swear, he's a riot! I snickered, giggled and chortled my way through his comments. Show me another man that would voluntarily read a Blaze novel and not be embarrassed? I hear Kathleen O'Reilly's a good sport. (Image from Amazon).

As a result of Maughta's blog I've been reading my way through all of the site (GREAT stuff) which led me to Rex Parker's own 'Pop Sensation' (he also writes every Sunday for 'Judge A Book By It's Cover'. Rex Parker has a vintage paperback collection (god do those bring back some memories of poking around in bookstores as a child) and every couple of days he pulls a book off the shelf and writes about the cover. He says 'That's it.' but really that's heaps! He takes a book and discusses the best things about the covers (front and back) and phrases that catch his interest for whatever reason - but it's the way in which it's done. It's hilarious! And the novels! The novels are fantastic - and a sign of the times. Give it a try and if you don't laugh then check your pulse 'cause it means you're probably dead and don't know it. If I could sniff disdainfully I would. (Image from Pop Sensation's blog header).

OH NO! Pop Sensation and Judge A Book By Its Cover have led me to even more links! Woe is me - crap, there goes my assignment. Try these: The Effing Librarian - god, I love the comment '...but I try very hard to avoid witnessing stupid. I turn away when I see it coming. But this was stupid out of nowhere'; I Hate Asheville - 'Yesterday our patrons were treated to a lovely bit of welcome. One of the trolls who congregate outside decided to hurl right in our entry way. Welcome to our library! Don't mind the puke'; A Librarian's Guide To Etiquette - A good librarian will celebrate freedom of information and the diversity of ideas by celebrating Banned Books Week at the library. The best way to do this is to round up all the really nasty books in your library and lock them all up in a glass display case'; Book Scans which is a visual catalogue of all vintage American paperbacks; The Society for Librarians* Who Say Motherfucker is a place for library staff to talk about what royally brasses them off, a lot strikes a familiar chord, some is sad and some outright funny, you definitely have to check out this video of an hilarious take on an old Tears for Fears music video that was set in a library.

Certainly there are more sites I could have listed and I'm wondering if I should add this to the list of regular stuff I (said I would) blog about. You know, I just might. I've been a bit haphazard lately (read bone-ass lazy) about posting more often so am going to aim for one a week. Heh, we'll see. If there are people still reading this (and I'm beginning to have my doubts but I don't care so ha! the joke's on you - maybe) then feel free to send me any funny book-related blogs you've come across. Please. And thank you!

YAY! At last, I've got an infodoodads post!! Been meaning to do it for ever and ever and kept getting sidetracked. So, where are we? Infodoodads - in particular, Top *13* Web 2.0 Tools for Librarians! This post I'm looking at Google Reader. Google Reader allows users to keep up-to-date with all online news and blogs, and checking updates is, apparently, as easy as checking your email. Ordinarily I go around joining things without really checking them out but this time I took the tour first.

What is Google Reader and why would I use it - good questions, glad you asked. And even if you didn't, I'm sure you meant to. Google Reader: allows you to keep track of all updates to news, blogs and websites, and stores it all in one place; is easy to use; allows you to share favourite sites/blogs with friends and family via a public page; can be accessed from anywhere; allows you to recommend articles to people and even add a customizable clip that displays your latest shared items in your site's sidebar; works on any mobile phone browser.

The blogs I follow in Blogger automatically get added to my Google Reader account, which I noticed as soon as I activated it (and that was as simple as clicking on 'Reader' while clearing my Gmail Inbox). How handy is that? I'm a huge fan of Bloglines but I've always found adding subscriptions kinda fiddly. It's not a huge issue for me, obviously, because I use it everyday, but it's such an easy process in G-Reader. Although, hmm, I'm still getting used to the layout of G-Reader. I did find a couple of new sites of interest: NPR's Books, the Boston Globe Book Reviews and Best Sellers Lists and Comic Book Resources for daily comic book news, reviews, previews and commentary.

Hokey pokey, so the only way I'm really going to be able to gauge how useful it'll be for me is by using it. Heh so I'll be logging in to my G-Reader each day as well as Bloglines. Why both? Because I can. Because I want to. Just because. So, I imagine in the next post I'll let you know how I find it. I've shared some stuff so you can take a look, too. Does anyone know if there's an easy way to just share all? Or should I be selective with my news? Err. Ack, I'll play with it and find out.

Funny links - HA! Do I have some LINKS for you :-) So let's get started:

Cake Wrecks - What is a Cake Wreck? It's when professional cakes go horribly, hilariously wrong. The link above is a hoot so check it out and, if you've got time, check out the rest - just don't do it at work or in public 'cause the chortling is bound to get you in trouble (check out the 'Sexual Harassment' cake and if you don't go WTF then seriously, what's wrong with you??). And what was wrong with the guy that ordered it? By the way, Cake Wrecks also won the 'Best Humour Blog' for the 2008 Blogger's Choice Awards.

Gmail's Mail Goggles - I kid you not, eh, I found a reference to 'The Official Gmail Blog' that helps people stop sending emails they may later regret. Mail Goggles checks that you really are sure that you want to send that late night/drunk message. How? By making you solve math problems! Really? (Great follow up question, that. Really?). Yeah, really. Solve a few simple problems (they didn't look that simple to me and I'm stone cold sober). Does it work? I have no idea. Is it for real? Lord, who knows. I found Capitano, who puts it better than I ever could: 'Mail Goggles will challenge you to do maths before it'll let you send emails. So if you're too drunk to do basic maths, you must be too drunk to write sensible emails, so your late night drunken rants won't embarrass you later.'

Playboy downsizes - hard times for Playboy (no pun intended). They're cutting jobs and expenses and also getting out of the dvd business permanently. As the article puts it 'Not even nekkid women can convince people to buy magazines these days.' Eloquent. Interesting to note that this article has had 1,877 views since it was posted on Thursday 16 October, 2008. Was discussing it with my mother (yes, I was discussing Playboy with my mother!) and she said it's logical if you think about it, with all of that free porn on the internet who wants to read a magazine? On the net the people move. Ick. Oh and hmm, I don't have a picture for this paragraph because, seriously, what the heck could I put that wouldn't get me arrested??

Smart Bitches Trashy Books - these ladies (authors and contributors) always have me in stitches. Their humour and candour slay me every time. And the next batch of links is from them.

Vids: two hilarious bride/groom wedding dance clips which you can view here and here; a very funny bad-review trailer put together by Brad Meltzer himself (it's his little league team and his gran's nursing home residents repeating all the bad book reviews he got eek!); Piper Palin spit shining baby Trig's hair; moose playing around and an interesting take on how love chemistry works.

Caption that Cover: name that sound (and no it's not as bad as it sounds, although the pic is heh).

Stuff: body piercings & tattos chat; Mills & Boon moving to 'hardcore erotica' (seriously, is it book porn? not so sure our customers would agree and is it our place to be snobby about it? nooooo so how come the article sounds so judgemental), although there are some very interesting facts about dates for the first of various sex acts printed in their novels, but I have to ask this question, does Blaze have books featuring inter-racial lesbianism like this article suggests because I'd be surprised if they did, oh, and I found that Mills & Boon were actual people whose names were Gerald Mills & Charles Boon - I never knew that; another M&B article titled 'Mills and Boon bodice rippers get naughty new porn titles' - enough of the PORN already geez - value judgement, much?; Paper Bag Press article who, apparently, know why we're here and know what we want and are also 'equal opportunity smut peddlers' LOL Jeepers creepers, all this laughing must be good for my health ;-)

Ok, if I remember rightly, then my next post is meant to be err (I have to check) 'whatever catches my interest'. Ha - looking forward to it. Oh, before I forget, I did watch the third presidential debate and now you can, too.

tags: infodoodads, CakeWrecks, GoogleReader, MailGoggles, SmartBitchesTrashyBooks