Is reading fiction a form of escapism?

I tend to bristle when I'm told that reading fiction is escapist. What I'm reacting to is the negative connotation that is attached to this line of thought. Because I usually feel attacked when someone says this, my immediate response is something along the lines of: "No it's not!" (I know, very mature ... and explanatory!) And then I fervently proceed to tell these people how much I've learned from reading fiction and how much it has expanded my thinking and allowed me a safe place from which to simulate various experiences and feelings. They never see it coming and usually start looking around trying to figure out how to get away from the crazy lady.

So ... today I was doing some professional reading and came across an interesting article about the connections between a reader and his or her reading choices. The article focuses on two reasons for our reading choices:

• a gravitation to certain books because of our past and the resultant "palace of memory" that particular past creates, and ...
  
• the relationship between ourselves and our environment (I'm using the term "environment" loosely here).

These reasons create a tendency in readers to choose books that allow us to either revisit or "deal with and resolve" experiences, or to reshape our world; fiction allows us the "space" to "simulate experiences outside [of ourselves] in a manner similar to that of airline pilots simulating the experience of flying an aircraft in flight simulators." Looked at in this way, I can agree that one purpose of my fiction reading is escapism. I escape to revisit pleasant experiences and places; I escape to find solace and affirmation; I escape in order to explore new worlds and ways of being. Yep, I definitely escape.

This article allowed me to come to terms with the escapist aspects of fiction reading in my own life. The term doesn't need to carry the negative connotation that I often find is the unspoken message. There are many good reasons (if one feels they need reasons) to escape into a good book!

"We frequently hear fiction reading described by both readers and fiction's detractors as escape.... However, we need to be clear about what readers are escaping from. They are escaping from a narrow, limiting view of the world and journeying to a place where it is possible to experience a deeper connection to our real selves and to live fully in our world."

Smith, Duncan. "Your Brain on Fiction." Reference & User Services Quarterly, vol. 49, issue 1, pp. 38-42.

So do you think reading fiction is a form of escapism? Why or why not? Do you think reading fiction to "escape" in some fashion is a negative thing?

Bloggiesta!: My New Social Bookmarking Button

I'm not able to officially participate in Natasha's (Maw Books Blog) fantastic Bloggiesta!, but since I've had blog maintenance and catching up on book reviews on the brain for awhile now, I'm unofficially participating.

Have you ever noticed that some bloggers have a nice little button at the end of each post to make it easy for readers to bookmark or share that post? Maybe I'm a little slow, but I noticed this the other day and I WANTED ONE TOO! I come across many blogger book reviews that I'd like to save, so I add them to my Delicious account making it easy to find and return to those reviews. Doing this is so much easier when a blogger includes a social bookmarking button to the end of each post. Of course, figuring out how to add this button to my blog posts was a little bit of a challenge.

I looked over all of the Blogger settings and found nothing which would allow me to "checkmark a box" and add this feature. That would have been too easy. Hmmmphh. My next step was to Google this task and I quickly came up with an easy-peasy way to do just what I wanted. Take a look at the end of this post and notice the nifty new "Share" button. If you want to add a button to your posts, go to AddThis and find out how!

Questions, questions ...

One way to strike fear into the heart of this librarian is to ask me to interpret the APA style manual (Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association). Can even the APA interpret this?? I am convinced that the manual is intentionally complex so as to require users to need counseling. I'm an MLA style guide kinda gal.

I also get FANTASTIC questions like:

Can you research this topic and give me the 10 most relevant scholarly articles? (Yes, I've actually been asked to do this by a student. Guess what the answer was???)

I'm looking for a book that ... like ... explains words? (Oh, you mean a dictionary? Last time I looked, the school had the word "university" in its name.)

There are these articles, that the library doesn't have, that I need by tomorrow? (Yes, it is quite appropriate to turn that statement into an interrogative because, no, we can't get it for you by tomorrow.)

I love my job. It's like being part of a comedy troupe some days.

Organizing

I've been organizing the blog. My list of reviewed books has grown large enough that I thought it would be nice of me to provide an author list and a title list to make it easier for anyone searching for a particular review. I've replaced the previous "Book Reviews" link in my header with Book Reviews by Author and Book Reviews by Title. These links are also on the sidebar.

I had a little trouble getting the alphabetic anchors at the top of the list to jump to the proper places in the list, but I think I figured out what I did wrong and they should now work. If anyone notices that these links are not working properly, please let me know.

It felt great to get this little task done!

Booking Through Thursday: Book Storage

This week’s question is suggested by Kat:

I recently got new bookshelves for my room, and I’m just loving them. Spent the afternoon putting up my books and sharing it on my blog . One of my friends asked a question and I thought it would be a great BTT question. So from Tina & myself, we’d like to know “How do you arrange your books on your shelves? Is it by author, by genre, or you just put it where it falls on?”

I have a bookshelf in the bedroom that holds about 100 books. I tend to keep my “special” books there (signed hardbacks, antiques, etc.). A lovely built-in bookcase with doors (and glass knobs!) is in the living room. I double park books in that one, so it currently holds about 200. The fiction books are separated by size and then arranged alphabetically by author. I’d rather not separate by size (pretty much hardbound vs. paperbound), but this does use the space more efficiently and allows me to use vertical space.

I live in such a tiny space (about 500 square feet), and so have had to develop a storage system that doesn't restrict access to my books. The books that don't fit in the house (many and mostly fiction) are stored in my garage in see through plastic bins that are numbered. Those books are each entered into my LibraryThing account with a notation referring to the numbered bin where the book is currently located. If I remove a book from a bin for some reason, it does not have to go back to the same one I took it from as long as I change the notation in LibraryThing. I adapted this method from one used by a California State University library that has many books in storage. Of course their system uses a huge warehouse and a robotic retrieval system!

My storage system seems to be working. It allows me to keep more books than will fit in my tiny space, yet they are very accessible.

Senate Candy Desk

Did you know that there is a Candy Desk in the United States Senate Chamber? No, I'm not speaking metaphorically. There is an actual desk with a drawer full of candy located in the back row on the Republican side of the Chamber. Read about it here.



For more information about traditions of the United States Senate, go to their Traditions Reference page. Scroll down to the Legacies section to read about Seersucker Thursday or Senate Bean Soup.

Neat-o new thing in my sidebar!

Here I go again being geeky! So ... did you see it? It's in the sidebar. I've added an email subscription option to my blog. Now you can have updates to Tip of the Iceberg delivered right to your inbox!

Cool Resource: Election 2008

Vanderbilt University has put together a wonderful website with links to many different aspects of Election 2008. You will find information on candidates and their stands on issues, public forums debating Presidential 2008 election issues, an atlas of U.S. Presidential elections, voting records on campaign issues, and a whole lot more! Go to Election 2008 and see what is available.

Look! It's a Scrolling List!

Yes, I have been playing with my blog template again. This time I've added a scrolling list of book bloggers in the sidebar! Of course I went to my new favorite website and I used this tip sheet to add the scrolling links and this tip sheet to add coding to make the scrolling list stop when you mouse over the list. Tips for New Bloggers is making me actually look like I know what I'm doing!

Please let me know if I'm a visitor to your book blog and I've forgotten to add you to this list.

Hey! Look! A Search Box!

Am I being too geeky? I'm excited because I put a search box in my sidebar. Tip sheet is here if you want to add one to your blog. Tips for New Bloggers is my new favorite website right now.

Any opinions out there on whether I should move the search box up higher or not? OK where it is?

New Header Links

I am squealing for joy over here. Can you hear it? This may not be cause for celebration for many people, but I am overjoyed that I successfully "messed with" my blog template and managed to put some nice navigation links in my header. I feel like I am in grade school and just got a big gold star!

Oh yes ... and remember my post from yesterday in which I mention not spending much time with "how-to's"? Well, yes I did use a how-to in order to accomplish this mighty task of adding navigation links. If you would like to take a look at this how-to, go to this Tip for Bloggers. I was pointed to this information by Nymeth at Things Mean a Lot. Thank you Nymeth!

Become a Librarian!

As a librarian, I found this quite amusing. Some things haven't changed much though, such as the young man looking for a specific book ... though he doesn't remember the title ... or author ... but it was blue!

This video was part of the US Government film series on careers, circa 1946.

Public Service Announcement from Your Friendly Internet Librarian

All of the political stomping lately has gotten me thinking about our voting behavior and how we research (or don't research) those running for public office. There are the obvious speeches and debates that allow us to get a "feel" for a candidate, but ... really ... they can say anything. Speeches and debates do give an idea of someone's ability to make a compelling argument and persuade, but this does not inform us as to what a candidate does or will do when it comes time to make decisions.

I prefer to look beyond what political candidates say; I want to see what they do. How do they vote in the legislature on issues? Which pieces of legislation do state governors sign and which pieces do they veto? These are things that speeches, debates, and YouTube sound bites won't tell me. Even voting records don't tell all of the story since deals are made and constituencies must be represented, but I believe I get a truer picture of what to expect in the future by looking at some facts.

Here are a few websites I point students to for research purposes.

A few good places to research Senate and House votes and activity:
United States Senate Roll Call
THOMAS
The Congressional Record
CQ Weekly (Consult your public library or a Federal Depository Library near you.)
Congress.org

A few good places to find out what the issues and votes are in your state:
Find your governor's website here or here
Find your state legislature website
Find your state website
National Conference of State Legislatures (I just discovered this site and haven't analyzed it yet, but it looks very interesting.)

Campaign Finance
Federal Election Commission

Happy researching!

NEW SIDEBAR LINK: Books Read Lists

For all of you book lovers out there, I've created a more organized list of books read during the year. I realized that the "books read" list in the sidebar was getting quite long and unwieldy (is this a word?) so I created a separate post and put that link in my sidebar. This link will take you to a list that I can update when I've finished a book. I can also add previous and future years reading lists to this section as well. I'm hoping to attach some additional information in the future that includes some kind of rating system and perhaps some genre labeling. As you can see, my librarian's mind has been working overtime here!

I've been fairly focused this year in my reading. I've been trying to catch up with a few series, focus on certain authors, read a few titles that someone else really really wanted me to read, and familiarize myself with some young adult books. In addition I've been able to read a few titles for a bookclub I attend.

Cool Resource: National Archives Films

"Over 70 years ago, the National Archives was founded to preserve American historical documents, as well as the moments and events that could be saved in still photos, films, and audio recordings. Today the Archives is home to everything from rare historical footage (newsreels and government documentaries from the 1930s) to the 1969 moon landing. Now Google is launching a pilot program to digitize its video content and offer it to everyone in the world for free, and you can watch a growing selection on Google Video." - Dr. John Jaeger, Dallas Baptist University

For those of you that have slow online connections that don't buffer well but would still like to see some of these films, you can download both the Google video viewer and individual films to a flash drive and then view at your leisure. I was able to download these from my extremely fast connection at work since I'm too cheap to pay for a fast connection at home (yes, I still use dial-up).

http://video.google.com/nara.html

Have you been "plutoed"?

I've been thinking about words lately. How we use them, how sometimes they just seem inadequate to express what we wish to express, and the creation and evolution of words.

I'm in the middle of reading The Professor and the Madman, which tells the story of the making of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). What has intrigued me most, so far, is the history and development of dictionaries. I'd never really thought about it until reading The Professor and the Madman, but Shakespeare and other early writers couldn't just "look it up" when unsure of a word's meaning or proper/current usage.

Early dictionaries were not terribly comprehensive and were meant only to be a record of current word meanings and correct usage. Rule books of language. Then came Samuel Johnson's dictionary followed about 100 years later by the enormous 70 year project we call the OED. Both of these dictionaries took on a far greater task than merely defining a narrow selection of words and providing proper usage. I can still remember discovering that the OED was a history of words and their meanings and usage. The OED captures, to the best of our knowledge, the origin of all English words and then provides a series of quotes showing usage over time. The word "dictionary" became much richer on the day I discovered the OED. No longer did I view that reference type as simply a rule book.

So how does all of this relate to Pluto? And what is "plutoed"? Evidently Pluto has become a verb when I wasn't looking. Seeing the word "Pluto," many of us will think of the "planet-formerly-called-Pluto." Some of us might think of the Roman god Pluto. Still others might think of a famous cartoon character who goes by that name. Nouns all. But the history of the word Pluto has just been expanded. One can now be "plutoed." OED, take note ... pluto is evolving.

According to a news article I read today, "[t]o 'pluto' is 'to demote or devalue someone or something,' much like what happened to the former planet last year when the General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union decided Pluto didn't meet its definition of a planet." Not only has the word Pluto expanded in meaning and usage, but "plutoed" was chosen 2006's Word of the Year by the American Dialect Society at its annual meeting Friday, January 5th. Quite an honor for such a young word.