Books, Readers and Beyond: #52 What to Read

1. For the read-a-like searches, I used What Should I Read Next? and Library Booklists and Bibliographies. I did two different things in Novelist, and got two very different lists. The first one I tried was the Find Similar Books button, and I chose not to uncheck any of the subjects presented. I only looked at the first page of books and every single book presented had the elements that were most prevalent in the storyline of the book I chose to look up, The Stand by Stephen King. All of the books dealt with some kind of plague or disease spreading througout a community. The second thing I tried was the author read-a-like search and this presented a list of authors to try that might give similar emotions or styles of writing. When I searched What Should I Read Next? the lists presented were predominantly other books by Stephen King with a few titles by other authors. In searching Library Booklists and Bibliographies, I went to booklists: adult fiction first, then searched this list and found If You Like... and clicked on it. From here I clicked on Specific Readalikes and then did a computer search for King, which found him listed in the General Read-Alikes Booklists. I clicked on the one that took me to the site from Christchurch City Libraries, NZ. On this site I clicked on Stephen King under the author listings. This presented a brief article similar to Novelist, but listed more authors to try.


In the past, I usually just used Novelist for this type of search. I probably will continue using Novelist as my first stop only because it's a bit easier to navigate and presents lists I'm typically looking for. The Library Booklists and Bibliographies would be helpful if I'm not finding anything in Novelist or need to find more than what Novelist gives me. I wouldn't try it first only because it takes some time to find the "right list." I wasn't too thrilled with What Should I Read Next? If it usually suggests more titles by the same author it won't be helpful in finding others to try.



2. I used Novelist because the advanced search was excellent for this type of search. Books I found included: Secret of the underground room by John Bellairs and The Ghosts Grave by Peg Kehret for the 13 year old, and Snakes don't miss their mothers: a novel by M.E. Kerr and The Little Gentlemen by Philippa Pearce for the animal lover.



3. Using Novelist I found John Saul and Charles Grant. I then used Library Booklists and Bibliographies and found a Dean Koontz read-a-like list with many authors one of which was Greg Bear.

4. The series is Song of the Lioness. I found a list of the books on Mid-Continent Public Library's juvenile series lists. These are:

1. Alanna: The First Adventure
2. In the Hand of the Goddess
3. The Woman Who Rides Like a Man
4. Lioness Rampant

Games and Gaming #38

I played Centipede on ArcadeRetro.com, or at least I tried to. I tried playing twice; but while I was playing, when I accidentally slid the mouse out of the game window, the game shut off with this warning that I might have been cheating to get a high score, or my firewall settings were too high. I don't think I was doing anything that would be considered cheating. It was fun, though, while I got to play, I used to play this in arcades as a kid.

As a child I had an Atari, but not Centipede. Then, I had the first Nintendo system, but only had 3 games with this one; then, I pretty much stopped playing video games all together. Every once in while I might spend a few minutes trying to play something, but for some reason I just don't get into them the way I did when I was younger.

As far as game consoles best for the library, I'm not really sure. I don't know what games are available for the different systems or which system is better. I kind of like the Wii only because it allows for some movement while playing some of the games. I think promoting physical activity as well as playing the games was a good move by Nintendo. Whether any brings in kids who will also check out books really depends on the kid. I think some are coming in just to play the games, but a few will hang around and check out books as well. Perhaps time will tell.

Games and Gaming #37

I played the research questions game on the Carnegie Mellon site. I had played the shelving game a couple of months ago when I came across this site before. I don't know if there are instructions for the game that I somehow missed, but it was a little hard to figure out what to do when I started. The hints helped a little, but I got stuck when I couldn't figure out where to click to find out what I was searching for. My first 3 people got frustrated and one of them left. I started over, once I figured it out and then it went a little faster. It also took me a little bit to figure out picking up the books and putting them into the bookdrop. It was kind of fun, though.


I think games in the library are a good thing. It does get the kids that would normally not come into the library to come in. I don't know for sure, though, that they are using other library services. Some might be checking out books, but I do see those that just come in for the free computers. At least the games themselves, require them to be able to read. Depending on what they are playing, they may be using problem solving skills, they socialize in a way with games like Runescape, if they choose to use that function. Some games provide physcial activity, but I think they need to be encourage to only spend so much time on the video games and then go do other things, outside, when it's not too hot.

Games and Gaming #35

I don't mind games. I used to play them when I was younger. And I can see how beneficial they can be. They can educate and help develop eye-hand coordination. I do think that children should be given limits, by their parents, though, as to how much time is spent gaming. They need to do more than just play video games all day.

I decided to try Freerice for this post. It was kind of fun, but can become addictive. You just want to keep figuring out the words. I like how this builds vocabulary. Unfortunately, if you're like me though, you may not remember the words. I may be able to figure them out when put in context. But for me to just come up with and use, I'm not sure that the words I didn't know will come to mind. Truthfully, several of the words were not in my vocabulary, but I deduced some of the meanings by looking at the word and remembering what suffixes, prefixes, or root words meant and picked the definition out from the list. And then a few were pure luck.

Spring Cleaning #30

I went through the files on the drives that I knew would be ok for me to mess around with or delete, which means the ones with my name on them. I created some new folders to better organize the files, which makes the main folder look nice and neat. I did find some really old stuff in the z: drive that I must have put in there. Most of this I just deleted. Anything that looked current was moved into a nice little folder. Or just left in the "open." I really didn't have much on the z: drive. Most of what I created over the years is in the Children's services folder on the p: drive. And I didn't think I should go through that and rearrange or delete stuff. I don't know what is or isn't being used. That's what I did with my stuff. Now, I need to do this on my home computer.

Spring Cleaning #29, Email

Ok, I know that I keep way too much email. I knew this before I started to delete the old. I have spent quite a bit of time getting the inbox down to 200 emails. I am stopping for now, because my head hurts. I will get around to deleting the others that I know I should get rid of. For future emails I will try to get through them more quckly by moving them to the trash or acting on them if need be. I'll try to keep forwarding those I want to keep to a gmail account that I had set up a while back just to keep a backup of this account. I don't want to move the listservs that I'm on to personal accounts, because I know I won't read them at all then. But I don't always read them right away. I usually save them for a later time and then go through them. If I don't read them within a day or two, though, I then just delete them. I will try to keep up with my email for the future and hopefully it won't get as full as it was, over 60% full.

Spring Cleaning #28

I usually use Google calendar to keep track of things, but this is if I remember to add the information to the calendar. The GTD method could work for me, if I could remember to do the steps to keep organized and wrote things down somewhere. I probaby should keep a to do list for home, since that's the place I tend to forget what I need to do first and always forget to do. The system may help keep organized at home. We'll see.