Odyssey Online

…this is a book I met when I needed to find a novel about librarians, The Camel Bookmobile by Masha Hamilton.  Based on a true story (as they say) it’s a fine read about a librarian and cultural assumptions about books. Excellent summer weeekend read…

Janwillem van de Wetering has published a good dozen novels about the life and times and cases of his two Amsterdam PD dectectives Rinus DeGeir and Henk Grijpstra. A great introduction to the series is the one book of short stories featuring DeGeir and Grijpstra, The Amsterdam Cops: Collected Stories.  Well written, terse, crime fiction…give it a try…

…with Memorial Day weekend upon us, two suggestions for books that speak eloquently to individuals who find themselves in the throws of a battle.  The first is a nonfiction title, the Face of Battle, by John Keegan, which is a scholarly study of what it has been like over history to fight in a battle–a soldier’s eye view of battle.  Also, James Jones’ book Thin Red Line (which was turned into a film by the same name) is an outstanding war book with focus on the troops fighting in the Pacific theatre in WWII.

…a provocative vision of the Internet’s future is Jonathan Zittrain’s book The Future of the Internet and how to Stop It.  Zittrain argues that the move to propietary devices such as BlackBerries could very well spell the end for open source, and, even, simply, amatuer coding.  Think the commodication of html…very much worth a read…

…on the road a week or so ago, and a Montreal-based DJ told the story of how Springsteen included the Clash’s song “London Calling” in one of his Philadelphia concerts, have seen a request for the song on a fan’s sign. It turns out there is and we have a beautiful biography of the late Joe Strummer, the Clash’s front man and song writer, titled Redemption Song, written by Chris Salewicz.

…here at ODY there is also a fun memior of life with the Clash in their early days titled Riot of Our Own: Night and Day with the Clash written by Johnny Green and Garry Barker…

…Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet is Jamie Ford’s first novel, and it is well worth a read.  Set during the Second World War, it tells of the Asian-American communities on the West Coast, and is also a wonderful portrait of father son relationships…

…with finals almost done, here at Odyssey Online we can turn our attention to summer blogging. This summer what we’re going to do is play the role of the reader’s advisor. So a couple of times every week we’ll have, from someone, recommendations on good summertime reading. We’re not limiting to stuff bibliographical, titles will come from across the sceptrum of books and will hopefully help fill drowsey summer afternoons by the beach or in the hammock!

…so, to begin with, Jim Harrison. Harrison is a well known novelist, his books bestsellers, and his novella Legends of the Fall the basis for the movie of the same name. However, Harrison started his writing career as a poet, and his latest two books of poetry show Harrison the poet at his best.  Saving Daylight is a 2006 Copper Canyon Press publication and absolutely captures Harrison’s narrative poetic voice.  Another recent and fun title is a book he wrote with Ted Kooser titled Braided Creek A Conversation in Poetry which is made up of the haikus and haiku-like poems the two men have been sending eachother over the years.  Both books are well worth a look…

…researchers at Ohio State University have concluded a study which links Facebook use to lower grades.  While the researchers freely concede that Facebook might be more of a symptom than a disease, they can definitely point to a letter grade drop in excessive Facebook habitues.  Read Thoreau: simplify, for finals swear off Facebook, television, and popular music written after 1980….