Powell's Books - View All of titianlibrarian's Customer Comments

: titianlibrarian, January 26, 2008
Here's a great picture book that's long been a favorite of mine and the children I know. It's the perfect way to introduce them to a familiar tale but with modern details. All the animals live in the city, and so the story unfolds amidst sidewalks, fire hydrants, and laundry hanging between the buildings. The little red hen treks to the hardware store, grocery store, and the delicatessen for everything she needs, but by the end of the story, her request for help with the dishes is met with unanimous "I will"s from the other animals. Very cute, and wonderful paper collage illustrations.
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: titianlibrarian, January 25, 2008
Angiers has taken every big idea of science and given it a chapter; most of the essentials are explained in a way that doesn't leave non-science people behind. From calibrations to chemistry to geology, she is able to cover the basics of a science education on one book.
I have to admit that I learned a lot. But I learned a lot in spite of Angiers' flowery prose, with its run-on sentences and out-there metaphors. While some of the strange comparisons were appropriate, others were too obscure or just too distracting.

In truth, sodium chloride, magnesium bromide, calcium chloride and the like are not molecules but ionic compounds, and though the hero here is still a bond, Sean Connery it is not. The ionic bond that brings us condiments, pebbles, eggshells, Alka-Seltzer, many household cleaning products, and a surprising selection of psychiatric drugs, is stiffer and more strait-laced than a covalent bond, less pliable, more predictable. A brick, a rock, the salt of the earth. An ionic bond is Roger Moore.

Weird, huh? It's like you have to wrap your mind around what people use these substances for (table salt, rocks, etc.), then what the difference is between the two kinds of bonds, and then she throws in the sneaky metaphor about James Bond. It all works, but it's too much for very casual reading...
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: titianlibrarian, January 25, 2008
This one was an interesting read; the author, who suffers from MS, also wrote the acclaimed Waist-High in the World: a life among the non-disabled. She converted to Catholicism years ago, but has found herself drifting away from the papal religion and into a Catholicism that embraces equality and tolerance.

I found her writing to be very similar to Madeleine L'Engle's journals--a crisp discussion of the authors' beliefs, punctuated by carefully selected anecdotes. As with L'Engle's work, I had to tread lightly, skimming several pages before I found a paragraph that really spoke to me. But she writes so beautifully that when you find something moving, it's worth it to write it down; it will be hard to find that same thought captured so well by another author.

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: titianlibrarian, January 21, 2008
A little more breadth than depth when dealing with most of the issues (immigrants' assimilation into American culture, international adoptions, women's friendships, women raising their children, etc.), but the main character's depth makes up for the skimming. Maryam is an Iranian widow who stands at the edge of the family. She is loved by all, but she just doesn't see how she ought to get too involved with her granddaughter's adoption from Korea, her daughter-in-law's involvement with an American family, and the love that an American widower wants to give her. But her loved ones never give up on her, thank goodness.
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: titianlibrarian, January 21, 2008
It's been slow at the library these past two days. Everyone's out doing last-minute shopping, the kids are at home recovering from the last week of school, and nobody's got any nagging reference questions on their mind right now. So I finished this at work today. Good but not great. Well-written but not too insightful. If you're outside the library profession you might be tickled by some of his musings, but for those in the industry it's pretty run-of-the-mill stuff.
Wow. I just reread myself--I don't mean to be so tough on the poor guy. It's a quick read that was compelling enough to finish, with lots of cute anecdotes. Enjoy!
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