USF Book Club: The Invention of Hugo Cabret

Hello! USF Book Club continues its procession of books about kids who have lost their fathers with The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick.

We will meet on March 16, 2012 from 12-1 pm in room 314 of Gleeson Library (note the different room — up on the third floor).

How to get the book: Request it through Link+ or get it at SF Public. Unfortunately it is not available in e-format.

Interested in Book Club? Check out our wiki page or email kbaughmanmcdowell@usfca.edu to sign up for the mailing list.

About The Invention of Hugo Cabret:

Here is a true masterpiece—an artful blending of narrative, illustration and cinematic technique, for a story as tantalizing as it is touching.Twelve-year-old orphan Hugo lives in the walls of a Paris train station at the turn of the 20th century, where he tends to the clocks and filches what he needs to survive. Hugo’s recently deceased father, a clockmaker, worked in a museum where he discovered an automaton: a human-like figure seated at a desk, pen in hand, as if ready to deliver a message. After his father showed Hugo the robot, the boy became just as obsessed with getting the automaton to function as his father had been, and the man gave his son one of the notebooks he used to record the automaton’s inner workings. The plot grows as intricate as the robot’s gears and mechanisms [...] To Selznick’s credit, the coincidences all feel carefully orchestrated; epiphany after epiphany occurs before the book comes to its sumptuous, glorious end. Selznick hints at the toymaker’s hidden identity [...] through impressive use of meticulous charcoal drawings that grow or shrink against black backdrops, in pages-long sequences. They display the same item in increasingly tight focus or pan across scenes the way a camera might. The plot ultimately has much to do with the history of the movies, and Selznick’s genius lies in his expert use of such a visual style to spotlight the role of this highly visual media. A standout achievement.

-Publisher’s Weekly

eBooks for eReaders

ebrary, the library’s biggest ebook resource, now gives you the option to read their ebooks on a number of e-readers and mobile devices.

1. Sign up for a personal ebrary account on the ebrary web site.
2. Either download the app for iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch; or follow the instructions for downloading chapters in pdf format to almost any device, or for downloading complete ebooks in Adobe Digital Editions format for most devices (not supported by Kindle, unfortunately).

Enjoy your ebooks!

USF Book Club: Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay

Howdy everyone! The Book Club will read and discuss Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay for December. We will meet on December 9, 2011 in Room 139 of Gleeson Library from 12-1 pm.

Gleeson has a copy of Savage Beauty that you can request, but it will probably go fast so your alternatives are requesting it through Link+, getting it from the SF Public Library, or reading it on one of our iPads or our Kindle.

Millay is one of my personal role models… she was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for poetry, and in her day, she achieved the level of celebrity now reserved for movie stars and reality show idiot savants. She was an anti-war activist and led a unconventional love life. I can only imagine how much better the U.S. would be if we celebritized our poets the way we do those in the entertainment industry.

One thing that boosted her to this level of celebrity was her spellbinding performances. She did a lot of radio broadcasts and reading tours in support of her work, and her thick, lustrous voice and classic early 20th century North East accent bewitched all those who tuned in.

Appropriate for the spirit of Christmas we are approaching, here is an old radio recording of Millay reading her poem “Ballad of the Harpweaver” in the Christmas edition of Anthology.

And my personal favorite… a classic

(Poem #34) First Fig

My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends--
It gives a lovely light!

– Edna St Vincent Millay

Follow the Yellow Brick Road

On exhibition in the Donohue Rare Book Room  through December 16 are over eighty volumes from the Rare Book Room’s Dr. M. Wallace Freidman Collection of L. Frank Baum and Oziana. L. Frank Baum (1856-1919) wrote over thirty-eight children’s books, the most famous of which The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was published in 1900 and later was made into a motion picture by MGM in 1939. Baum went on to write fourteen books in the series. Following his death, the series was continued by Ruth Plumbly Thompson. Baum also wrote several non-Oz titles, including Mother Goose in Prose (1897), The Master Key (1901), Phoebe Daring (1912), The Sea Fairies (1911) and Sky Island (1912) among others. The exhibition brings together a selection of Baum’s work, showing the breadth of his life’s work and a range of illustration by such figures as Maxfield Parish, W.W. Denslow and John R. Neill.

The Gleeson Library is pleased to exhibit these materials to coincide with the exhibition Monster in the Bookshelf: The Artwork of Studio 5 in the Thacher Gallery. The books on exhibition are all from the permanent collections of the Donohue Rare Book Room and are available to students and researchers who wish to use them.

John Hawk
Head Librarian, Special Collections & University Archives

David Vann Reading

The Gleeson Library is pleased to sponsor a faculty reading on Tuesday, November 15 when it welcomes David Vann, University of San Francisco Associate Professor in the MFA in Writing Program, who will read from his recent works Last Day on Earth: A Portrait of the NIU School Shooter (University of Georgia Press, 2011) and Caribou Island (Harper, 2011). Vann is also the author of Legend of a Suicide (University of Massachusetts Press, 2008) which won 10 prizes, including the Prix Medicis in France and the Premi Llibreter in Spain. Legend of a Suicide was on 42 “Best Books of the Year” lists including The New Yorker Book Club and The Times Book Club. David Vann is a current Guggenheim Fellow and a former Wallace Stegner Fellow and National Endowment for the Arts Fellow.

The program begins at 5:00 on Tuesday, November 15 in the Donohue Rare Book Room, located on the third floor of the Gleeson Library. Light refreshments will be served and books will be available for purchase. The program is free and open to the public. All are welcome to attend. For further information, please call (415) 422-2036.

John Hawk
Head Librarian, Special Collections & University Archives

USF Book Club: Nov/Dec Selections

Howdy bookclubbers! Today we discussed Packing for Mars under a bright blue sky in the USF Garden and we choose our next two selections. We’ll meet in the seminar room of Gleeson Library (#209) for both of these meetings.

12-1 pm, November 11, 2011 (Friday): A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore (novel)

Gleeson has a copy of A Gate at the Stairs that you can request, but it will probably go fast so your alternatives are requesting it through Link+, getting it from the SF Public Library, or reading it on one of our iPads or our Kindle.

Just months after 9/11, college student Tassie Keltjin, the brilliant daughter of a Midwestern farmer, becomes a part-time nanny for an older white couple who have adopted an African American baby. Enjoying her delightful young charge and reveling in her love affair with her Brazilian boyfriend, Tassie has a growing suspicion that her employers are somehow off. When their identities, as well as her boyfriend’s, are blown, Tassie heads home, only to be hit with another, more devastating shock. Verdict: Moore uses the same kind of poetic precision of language found in her dazzling short story collections (e.g., Birds of America) to draw the reader into her long-awaited third novel (after Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?). The challenge for readers is to reconcile the beautiful sharpness of her language with two wildly improbable plot threads. — Library Journal

One of the librarians here at Gleeson got an advanced copy of A Gate at the Stairs two summers ago. I swooped it up from the pile in the staff room and read it on my vacation to New Orleans. Moore–of whom I was a big fan already, having read a handful of her books in undergrad–didn’t disappoint with this one. If I have the time, I will re-read it before book club.

12-1 pm, December 9, 2011 (Friday) in room 139 (the electronic classroom of Gleeson Library): Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay by Nancy Millford (biography)

**PLEASE NOTE date and location change**

Gleeson has a copy of Savage Beauty that you can request, but it will probably go fast so your alternatives are requesting it through Link+, getting it from the SF Public Library, or reading it on one of our iPads or our Kindle.

Millay (1892-1950) was a Jazz Age phenomenon, causing a sensation wherever she went; lines from her brief poem, “First Fig” (“I burn my candle at both ends/ It will not last the night… “) would become the rallying cry of a generation. She was notorious for her sexual unconventionality and (as Edmund Wilson put it) “her intoxicating effect on people… of all ages and both sexes.” How a lyric poet could have achieved such celebrity is the conundrum at the heart of Savage Beauty. Millay, as Milford depicts her, was a troubled genius who used her prodigious gift to propel herself out of rural poverty and into the center of her age. She carefully cultivated the reporters and patrons who took the “fragile girl-child” under their wing. But her delicate image masked a force of nature whose incendiary wit and insatiable ambition took the public by storm. Milford deftly links the lyric intensity of Millay’s work with her ravenous appetite for life. Whether tracing her ghoulishly close relationship to her mother and sisters, her years at the center of cosmopolitan life or her morphine addiction and untimely death, this account offers its readers a haunting drama of artistic fame. A true paradigm of literary biography, this finely crafted book is not to be missed. — Publisher’s Weekly

Cinda, a librarian at my old work, gave me this biography when I was 22. At first I was surprised to remember I had told her I was interested in it; then I filled with dread: another book to read. My my my! This book has probably influenced my pursuit of living the poet’s life more than any other… or well, until I read Chelsea Girls by Eileen Myles when I was 26. Savage Beauty was such an influence I took it to the salon and instructed my stylist to cut off my long ponytail and give me an Edna St. Vincent Millay 1930s bob. I will definitely re-read this one for book club and I am sure I will shed a few tears along the way.

To sign up for the book club mailing list, email kbaughmanmcdowell@usfca.edu.

You can also check us out on our WIKI PAGE.

USF Book Club: Packing for Mars

Howdy book lovers! The USF Book Club’s next meeting will be on Friday, October 7, 2011 from 12 noon – 1 pm in the USF Community Garden (located next to the School of Education Parking lot, entrance at Turk Blvd. and Tamalpais Terrace).

We will discuss Packing for Mars by Mary Roach.

Packing for Mars is the San Francisco One City One Book selection. Join us and all of San Francisco in reading this one, which I have heard a lot of good things about. You can read an interview with Ms. Roach that appeared in the SF Chronicle last year to get an overview of Packing for Mars. To get a copy, you can request it through SF Public, Link+, put a hold on Gleeson’s copy, or read it on one of our iPads or our Kindle.

from Amazon.com:

With her wry humor and inextinguishable curiosity, Mary Roach has crafted her own quirky niche in the somewhat staid world of science writing, showing no fear (or shame) in the face of cadavers, ectoplasm, or sex. In Packing for Mars, Roach tackles the strange science of space travel, and the psychology, technology, and politics that go into sending a crew into orbit. Roach is unfailingly inquisitive (Why is it impolite for astronauts to float upside down during conversations? Just how smelly does a spacecraft get after a two week mission?), and she eagerly seeks out the stories that don’t make it onto NASA’s website–from SPCA-certified space suits for chimps, to the trial-and-error approach to crafting menus during the space program’s early years (when the chefs are former livestock veterinarians, taste isn’t high on the priority list). Packing for Mars is a book for grownups who still secretly dream of being astronauts, and Roach lives it up on their behalf–weightless in a C-9 aircraft, she just can’t resist the opportunity to go “Supermanning” around the cabin. Her zeal for discovery, combined with her love of the absurd, amazing, and stranger-than-fiction, make Packing for Mars an uproarious trip into the world of space travel.

–Lynette Mong

Email kbaughmanmcdowell@usfca.edu to get on the mailing list. Hope to see you there!

Fusion

Fusion is a new tool that will allow you search, in one place, the majority of the library’s books and articles. It will include all the materials in our library catalog Ignacio, as well as the content of the majority of our many, many journal article databases.

Figuring out where to start looking for articles and books can be very confusing when the library offers more than 200 database options. Fusion will be the clear place to start.

Questions and Answers:

• Will Fusion include everything the library has?
  No, but it will include so much of what the library has that it will almost always be the best place to start your search.
• When would Fusion not make sense as the first place to search?
  Some examples: If you’re interested in finding only books, then our library catalog Ignacio would be a more appropriate place to begin. If you’re looking specifically for statistical data or encyclopedia/dictionary entries or images, it would be better to use a database devoted to those specific types of information.
• I’m very proficient using the databases in my subject area. Is there any reason I should use Fusion?
  Because Fusion will have such broad coverage, it may locate relevant materials published in other fields that you wouldn’t otherwise find in a subject-specific database.
• So then why would I want to choose a subject-specific database anymore—can I just use Fusion instead?
  Fusion will not be replacing any of our subject-specific databases. These databases offer valuable advanced searching capabilities tailored to their subject areas.
• When will Fusion be available?
  We’re building it right now. We hope to make it available some time in September.

The Technical Jargon

Fusion is an example of a trend in libraries of web-scale discovery services. Our service will be provided by Ebsco Discovery Service.

USF Book Club: Infinite City and Packing for Mars

Hello friends! The USF Book Club has made its selections for the next two months:

September: Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas by Rebecca Solnit –  12 noon, Friday September 9, 2011, in the community garden.

Infinite City is the 2011 USF Reading Project selection, so we are reading this beautiful, full color, large-format book in support. You can get the book through SF Public Library, Link+, or put a hold on one of Gleeson’s copies.

October: Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void by Mary Roach October 7, 2011 (Friday) 12 noon – 1 pm in the USF Community Garden.

Packing for Mars is the San Francisco One City One Book selection. Join us and all of San Francisco in reading this one, which I have heard a lot of good things about. You can read an interview with Ms. Roach that appeared in the SF Chronicle last year to get an overview of Packing for Mars. To get a copy, you can request it through SF Public, Link+, put a hold on Gleeson’s copy, or read it on one of our iPads or our Kindle.

We hope to see you! If you would like to be added to the Book Club mailing list, email Kelci at kbaughmanmcdowell@usfca.edu.

USF Book Club: The Lonely Polygamist

Hello!

On July 20, 2011 the USF Book Club will meet to discuss The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udall. Gleeson’s copy is checked out right now, but we’ve got it loaded on our iPads and our Kindle. There’s always Link+ or SF Public until our copy comes in!

Come meet us in the seminar room, #209, of Gleeson Library from 12-1 pm. Bring your lunch and bring your friends! We don’t require you to have read the book to join the discussion. All members of the USF Community are welcome and no rsvp is necessary.

A family drama with stinging turns of dark comedy, the latest from Udall (The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint) is a superb performance and as comic as it is sublimely catastrophic. Golden Richards is a polygamist Mormon with four wives, 28 children, a struggling construction business, and a few secrets. He tells his wives that the brothel he’s building in Nevada is actually a senior center, and, more importantly, keeps hidden his burning infatuation with a woman he sees near the job site. Golden, perpetually on edge, has become increasingly isolated from his massive family-given the size of his brood, his solitude is heartbreaking-since the death of one of his children. Meanwhile, his newest and youngest wife, Trish, is wondering if there is more to life than the polygamist lifestyle, and one of his sons, Rusty, after getting the shaft on his birthday, hatches a revenge plot that will have dire consequences. With their world falling apart, will the family find a way to stay together? Udall’s polished storytelling and sterling cast of perfectly realized and flawed characters make this a serious contender for Great American Novel status. –Publisher’s Weekly

 

USF Book Club: June & July Selections

Hello friends! Today Book Club picked its next two titles:

On June 15, 2011 we will discuss Delicate Edible Birds by Lauren Groff. Gleeson does not yet own a physical copy of this, but you can view it on one of our iPads or our Kindle, request it through Link+, or get it from SF Public!

On July 20, 2011 we will discuss The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udall. Indeed, the same with this title — we don’t yet own a physical copy, but we’ve got it loaded on our e-readers. There’s always Link+ or SF Public until our copy comes in!

Come meet us in the seminar room, #209, of Gleeson Library from 12-1 pm. Bring your lunch and bring your friends! We don’t require you to have read the book to join the discussion. All members of the USF Community are welcome and no rsvp is necessary.

Following the publication of Groff’s first novel, The Monsters of Templeton (2008), comes this collection of nine short stories, six of which have never been published. The richly conceived, finely detailed stories offer portraits of smart, daring women who are in search of, in thrall to, or disillusioned by love. In “Lucky Chow Fun,” winner of a Pushcart Prize, Groff returns to the town of Templeton to tell the story of a high-school swimmer who uncovers the sordid sexual secrets of her seemingly idyllic small town. “L. DeBard and Aliette,” included in the latest edition of Best American Short Stories, is a reimagining of the love story of Abelard and Héloïse that sees the couple recast as an Olympic swimmer and his pupil, both of whom suffer through the flu epidemic of 1918. And in the title story, an unconventional female reporter, fleeing the Nazis in rural France along with a band of male correspondents, must strike a sordid bargain with a brutal farmer to secure their safe passage. Vivid tales from a gifted young writer who continues to surprise. –Joanne Wilkinson, Booklist

Student Curated Exhibit: Illustrated Books in the Rare Book Room

Bookends: Illustrated Works Spanning 500 Years From The Donohue Rare Book Room

Reception: Thursday, May 12, 3:00-4:30, Gleeson Library, Donohue Rare Book Room

Exhibition Dates: April 29th-June 17th, Gleeson Library, Donohue Rare Book Room

Curated by the University of San Francisco’s Spring 2011 Museum Studies I class and drawn from the Donohue Rare Book Room’s permanent collection, this exhibit celebrates the art and historical importance of the illustrated book in the western tradition.

The exhibition features more than 50 objects from the 15th century to the present. Notable works include a leaf of the Gutenberg Bible (1450-1455), Thomas More’s first edition Utopia (1516, frontispiece illustrated on front), Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass (1872), Frank L. Baum’s The Wizard of Oz (1900), and Charles Hobson’s Writing on the Body: Words of Degas (1999).

USF Book Club: The Elegance of the Hedgehog

While our April meeting is coming up in a couple days, the Book Club had the foresight to pick our May selection ahead of time.

In May we will discuss The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery, translated from the French by Alison Anderson.

I’m looking forward to this book because folks were raving about it on last year’s summer reading episode of Philosophy Talk, and while I don’t consider myself a philosopher per se, I like novels that are educate as well as inform.

To get The Elegance of the Hedgehog, you can put a hold on Gleeson’s copy, request it through Link+, check it out of the SF Public Library, or check out one of our iPads or Kindle, which are loaded with the book.

We will meet in the Electronic Classroom in Gleeson Library from 12 noon – 1 pm on Thursday May 12, 2011.

In a bourgeois apartment building in Paris, we encounter Renée, an intelligent, philosophical, and cultured concierge who masks herself as the stereotypical uneducated “super” to avoid suspicion from the building’s pretentious inhabitants. Also living in the building is Paloma, the adolescent daughter of a parliamentarian, who has decided to commit suicide on her thirteenth birthday because she cannot bear to live among the rich. Although they are passing strangers, it is through Renée’s observations and Paloma’s journal entries that The Elegance of the Hedgehog reveals the absurd lives of the wealthy. That is until a Japanese businessman moves into the building and brings the two characters together. A critical success in France, the novel may strike a different chord with some readers in the U.S. The plot thins at moments and is supplanted with philosophical discourse on culture, the ruling class, and the injustices done to the poor, leaving the reader enlightened on Kant but disappointed with the story at hand. –Heather Paulson, Booklist

Email kbaughmanmcdowell@usfca.edu to sign up for the book club email list.

Hope to see you there!

USF Book Club: Cutting for Stone

Happy New Year! The USF Book Club has selected its next book. We are reading Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese and will meet on Thursday, March 3, 2011 to discuss it. We’ll be in the seminar room (#209) of Gleeson Library from 12 noon – 1 pm.

This book is somewhat longer than our usual selections (541 pages) and is insanely popular right now, so make sure to request your copy soon!

Gleeson’s copy is currently checked out, but you can try requesting it through Link+ or accessing it through the San Francisco Public Library, who have numerous paper copies, as well as a spoken word e-edition, an online e-version, and as spoken word via CD. Any California resident can get a library card to SFPL, so if you haven’t yet, I recommend doing so!

Since the book is so popular, you might not have luck getting it through a library. The NOOK (Barnes and Noble) and Kindle (Amazon) e-version is only $5, or you could help out a local independent book store like Green Apple or the Booksmith by purchasing it there. Remember, Gleeson’s iPads and Kindle will also have Cutting for Stone loaded on them!

Lauded for his sensitive memoir (My Own Country) about his time as a doctor in eastern Tennessee at the onset of the AIDS epidemic in the ’80s, Verghese turns his formidable talents to fiction, mining his own life and experiences in a magnificent, sweeping novel that moves from India to Ethiopia to an inner-city hospital in New York City over decades and generations. Sister Mary Joseph Praise, a devout young nun, leaves the south Indian state of Kerala in 1947 for a missionary post in Yemen. During the arduous sea voyage, she saves the life of an English doctor bound for Ethiopia, Thomas Stone, who becomes a key player in her destiny when they meet up again at Missing Hospital in Addis Ababa. Seven years later, Sister Praise dies birthing twin boys: Shiva and Marion, the latter narrating his own and his brother’s long, dramatic, biblical story set against the backdrop of political turmoil in Ethiopia, the life of the hospital compound in which they grow up and the love story of their adopted parents, both doctors at Missing. The boys become doctors as well and Verghese’s weaving of the practice of medicine into the narrative is fascinating even as the story bobs and weaves with the power and coincidences of the best 19th-century novel.

You can visit our wiki or you can sign up for the Book Club’s email list by emailing kbaughmanmcdowell@usfca.edu. Hope to see you there!

USF Book Club: Bright-Sided

The USF Book Club is looking towards 2011 with the ferocity of scholars ~ we’ve picked  a nonfiction title for our first selection of the new year!

We’ll read Bright-sided : how the relentless promotion of positive thinking has undermined America by Barbara Ehrenreich, the author of Nickel and Dimed.

We’ll meet on Wednesday, January 12, 2010 from 12 noon – 1 pm in the seminar room (#209) of Gleeson Library to discuss the book. Bring your lunch and tell your friends/colleagues!

How to get the Book

Since Gleeson and many other libraries will be closed for a week-long period over the holidays, make sure to request your copy soon! You can request the book through Link+ by clicking here since our copy is checked out right now. You can also try to pick up a copy at the SF public library. Last but not least, an e-book version of Bright-Sided will be on all the iPads and Kindles we loan to patrons (on the iPads, it will be on the Amazon Kindle App).

A sharp-witted knockdown of America’s love affair with positive thinking and an urgent call for a new commitment to realism Americans are a “positive” people–cheerful, optimistic, and upbeat: this is our reputation as well as our self-image. But more than a temperament, being positive, we are told, is the key to success and prosperity. In this utterly original take on the American frame of mind, Barbara Ehrenreich traces the strange career of our sunny outlook from its origins as a marginal nineteenth-century healing technique to its enshrinement as a dominant, almost mandatory, cultural attitude. Evangelical mega-churches preach the good news that you only have to want something to get it, because God wants to “prosper” you. The medical profession prescribes positive thinking for its presumed health benefits. Academia has made room for new departments of “positive psychology” and the “science of happiness.” Nowhere, though, has bright-siding taken firmer root than within the business community, where, as Ehrenreich shows, the refusal even to consider negative outcomes–like mortgage defaults–contributed directly to the current economic crisis. With the mythbusting powers for which she is acclaimed, Ehrenreich exposes the downside of America’s penchant for positive thinking: On a personal level, it leads to self-blame and a morbid preoccupation with stamping out “negative” thoughts. On a national level, it’s brought us an era of irrational optimism resulting in disaster. This is Ehrenreich at her provocative best–poking holes in conventional wisdom and faux science, and ending with a call for existential clarity and courage.

~Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, LLC