Lari's Bookshelf

This is seriously my favorite holiday of the year. I have some pretty awesome vampire teeth I'll use to scare any unsuspecting children that come knocking tonight, and I'm painting my three year old daughter's face like a skeleton . Screw that princess shit. Speaking of Halloween, I love Halloween songs. We started the day by watching The Nightmare Before Christmas , which is arguably the best Halloween/Christmas movie ever. One of my favorite songs is "Jack's Lament," where Jack has an existential crisis, and realizes that while he has everything he has ever wanted, he still feels like he's missing something in his life: Then, after watching Nostalgia Chick's review of The Worst Witch , I learned of a music scene which sadly has escaped my radar my entire life. Until now: I can't figure out if Tim Curry singing this 80s music vomit was making me happy, sad, confused, etc. What is going on there? All I know is that my jaw dropped early...

This post is my entry in the Book Nerd Out giveaway hosted by Book Riot: Reviews, Recommendations, and Commentary about books and reading (but, you know, fun). When I was studying my undergrad, I experienced the beginnings of what would become an existential experience. Many times I was confused and lost as I wandered around campus, since I was constantly deep in my thoughts.  Then one day I discovered a copy of  Meditations  by Marcus Aurelius in the library. This book was instrumental in pulling me out of a dark place and my introduction to stoic philosophy. I wrote a poem this morning about that experience: In the labyrinth of a library, Sanctuary is a small hardbound work, A dead emperor gives comfort, Words sweet like the plumeria, Musings echoed through millennia, Brittle pages redolent of weathered wood, Learning to live as bees that make honey, My own place in the universe,  Accepting what I cannot change,...

My Nooky-Nook I was pleased to find the article Free E-books for Happy Patrons  in Booklist Online's The Corner Shelf. In it, author Rebecca Vnuk shares some great online resources librarians and library patrons can use to access free ebooks. The great thing about it is that you don't have to be a library patron or librarian to appreciate the following list: InkMesh  is a search engine that searches over 30 online sources for free e-books. You can search by title or author. Project Gutenberg , the original site for free text online, offers more than 33,000 free books that play nicely with any e-reader platform. You’ll find mostly classics and public-domain works here. No registration is required, and the site is easy to use. A nice feature is their “bookshelves”—collections grouped by topic. Baen Books , publisher of science fiction and fantasy, offers a number of their titles as free downloads. Established authors such as Eric Flint, Lois McMaster Bujold, Merced...

This group read discussion is hosted over at Stainless Steel Droppings  and it is filled with spoilers, so please don't read this post if you are intending to read the book. If you would like a spoiler-free review, please check out Grace's review, on Books Without Any Pictures, here .  1. Now that it’s all said and done; what did you think of the book? Did you see the ending coming? I didn't see Rachel's dark side coming. I thought that was well done. The reader also was let on that Dom killed Rachel early on, and he actually did kill her (though not in a way the reader expected). I also didn't expect Benedicte's whole episode with aborting her baby. That was rather shocking, and must have been traumatic. 2. What do you think of the characters? Lawrenson took us on a twisty little ride there, I had trouble deciding who was good and who wasn’t for a while there! What do you think of Dom? Of Sabine? Rachel? Dom - I love this character. I fully underst...

Scrivener is an acclaimed writing software for writers of all kinds. Now that they are offering a free trial for NaNoWriMo , I couldn't help but download and install it on my computer. If you are interested in participating in NaNoWriMo this year, I highly recommend you try Scrivener for yourself. They even have a preset template for your NaNoWriMo novel that you can access when you start a new project. This is the first year I'm doing NaNoWriMo. I'm a little nervous about the challenge, but am glad I have a tool like this that can help me out. Have you done NaNoWriMo before? Are you doing it this year? Are you going to use Scrivener?

I just enjoyed watching this Victorian-era, action orgy. It has a lot of the look and feel of the first SH adaptation with Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law: I shared the first trailer in a previous post . That post also contains links to free sources of where you can get the original works by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle .

I just made myself a zombie here:  http://makemezombie.com/ .....brains.....

Disclaimer: I haven't finished the reading for the first part, but I'm nearly finished.  This book discussion is hosted by Carl V. Over at Stainless Steel Droppings . 1. This may seem like an obvious opening question, but what do you think of The Lantern thus far? I like it, but so far it is just "meh" to me. My husband and I read the beginning together, and I think he put it best when he described it as thus: Description of scenery, doing things, French words. Repeat The book is frankly, a little monotonous and the pace is nearly too slow for me to stay interested. . . . . . except when they hinted at the buried treasure thing. The pirate in me always gets excited when she hears of buried treasure! Yarrr. 2. The book appears to be following the experiences of two different women, alternating back and forth between their stories. Are you more fond of our main protagonist’s story or of Benedicte’s or are you enjoying them both equally? I like both eq...

There's a new 2012 calendar and it features information professionals or librarians. It's called Men of the Stacks  (FYI: some of the pics may be considered risqué) and it breaks the stereotype of what people typically consider a librarian to be: "We know what people think: Dewey, glasses, shushing, books, hairbuns, Party Girl and card catalogs.  Yes, we know what people think.  We know that the American library profession is approximately 80% White and 72% female; and we know that tens of thousands of librarians are expected to reach age 65 in the next 5 years.  We also know that this is not us." - MOS: The Calendar The thing that pleased me about this calendar, is that all of its proceeds are going to the It Gets Better Project , a movement designed to help struggling LGBTQ youth who are coming out in their communities. By the way, if you haven't seen George Takei's video contribution to a related organization, called The Trevor Project (which work...

If you're a neurotically indecisive reader like me, you probably need some help when trying to figure out what to read next. Here are some websites that go above and beyond generic recommendations. These tend to offer a dynamic and user friendly interface for someone solely seeking book or author recommendations. 1. YourNextRead.com Simply search for a book you like, and a little map of related titles will pop up. It saves a history of the books you browse during your session, and provides easy access to websites where you can purchase the book or find more reviews. You can even create an account, make your own maps, and share them. If you like this you may also want to check out YourNextFilm.com and, if you're a gamer, YourNextGame.com . 2. Whichbook.net I'm a huge fan of this website's user interface. It allows you to browse books based on what you "feel" like reading at any given moment. You can choose if you want something long or short, v...