...be an advocate for Maori"
~ Te Roopu Whakahau hui-a-tau korero, January 2012
Tena koutou. I've spent the last three and a half days at Auckland University's Waipapa Marae with some 70+ Maori who work in libraries and/or information management. Once a year we come together, from all around New Zealand, to discuss, debate and challenge each others' ideas and initiatives. Mostly, I try to avoid our hui-a-tau as much as possible because I'm not much of a one for communal living. It's intense, you're on top of each other for 3-4 days with nowhere to just disappear and collect yourself, and it's a huge overload on my social skills. Give me a keyboard and I'll rattle on until your eyes bleed. Put me in the hot seat and ask me to talk about myself in front of the group and I go into meltdown. I'll wait till no one's looking and then sneak out the door. Also, it's extremely hard to be my usual non-committal self when people start to expect things of me. This year, though, this year was different. This year it was great for a number of reasons, although I'm going to list a few that have meaning for me.
...for what he reads as a task will do him little good."
~ Samuel Johnson
If you're not interested in books then you're shit out of luck for this post because that's all this is: my to-be-read list for this year. As it stands at the moment, anyway. Truth be told, I'm quite disappointed there are only 22 titles listed so far. No doubt I'll be adding to it as the days/weeks/months go by. My 'one word' is ensuring that my reading choices are a lot more varied than they've been in a few years. A few months ago this might have disturbed me. This year? I'm not just liking it, I'm looking forward to it. A few of the titles are 2010, maybe a couple are earlier (Wuthering Heights, a re-read for an online initiative I'm participating in, and The slap, because I'd just read What I did and wanted to know why people keep saying one is like the other), but the rest are published this year. Someone asked me the other day where I find a lot of 'what do I read next?' ideas. The answer to that is, well, all sorts of places: Twitter, Facebook, conversations with customers/colleages, newspapers, magazines, RSS feeds (largest number from other bookloving bloggers), sides of buses (seriously), author recommendations, meetings, nephews, siblings, parents... Everywhere, everything, everyone has the potential to give me book ideas. I just have to be paying attention.
...that people skip."
~ Elmore Leonard
If you could choose ONE word to live by this year, what would it be?
I've been absent for ages because 1) I'm lazy and 2) I don't feel I have the same almost-anonymity I want/thought I had and so I can't just go BURBLEBURBLEBURBLE about stuff. So, no posts about work. Except general stuff. When I blog about work...work gets nervous :P Although you (the invisible YOU) all know that nobody reads my blog. It is one voice among so many and is really just a place for me to talk about, well, not very much. Interesting to me, and that's about it. People have more interesting things to do. Don't you people? Doesn't mean I won't blog about libraries ever again, though. Just not specifically about mine. Meh. Enough about that. Let's get on to my non-resolution for 2012: one word.
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