Text and Java

 Catherynne M. Valente and I have this relationship: I think her books sound interesting, pick them up, and then I start to read them and stop. I can't exactly say why. This has happened with Palimpset and The Girl Who Circumvented Fairy Land in blah, blah, blah. Honestly, it's me. I just can't shovel through the mucky muck to get to the real story. That is,  Valente takes a very long walk around the garden, pointing out butterflies in order to make her point and by the time she does, I have forgotten why I cared in the first place.    It's like listening to a charming old person rattle on about a war you are interested in. They wander in the storytelling, and in fact jump decades on you every once in a while. After a half an hour, you begin to plot how to remove your sense of hearing without the old person noticing and your neck hurts from bobbing your  head up and down politely. It's not that you don't want to like the story. It's not that you don't...

Anyone who knows me, or who has been following this blog for awhile has heard me bemoan the lack of teens in my library (in fact, anyone over the age of 12 and under the age of 50 avoids this place like the plague). Despite trying a variety of programming with mixed results, I cannot get a steady stream of kids up in here. I've been following the wise, wise advise that I picked up somewhere: do what you are interested in . And it works, if the passion is there, it comes through the program and the patrons can tell. It works. BUT, today I overheard one of my coworkers talking about a programmer from another library. She said, "He doesn't do any of the stuff Tex tnjava does, his teens like the (insert the hockey team) and (insert local football team). You know, normal things." First of all, you should have heard how the word "stuff" was said (as if she were referring to toxic waste and/or child predators). And to clarify, the "stuff"  I ...