Yarn Bombing

Earlier this week I was walking through our book stacks, when I came across the yarn flower pictured here. Attached to it was a short note that read "thank you for your cooperation in making Everett a little brighter on International Yarn Bombing Day. Knit something." I had heard of yarn bombing; we even have a book on it entitled Yarn Bombing: The Art of Crochet and Knit Graffiti; but I never thought I would see it in the library.It turns out that June 11 was the first International Yarn Bombing Day,and I am very pleased that the Everett Public Library was part of it, albeit in a small way.

Bloomsday!

Today is Bloomsday, the day in 1904 when James Joyce's novel Ulysses takes place. The day is celebrated everywhere there are Joyce fans. I was pleased to see that someone has checked out a copy of Ulysses from the Everett Public Library. The book has a reputation for being challenging, and if you look in our catalog you will see several guides to help readers find their way through the mind of Leopold Bloom and Joyce's writing style.

If you're not up to reading the entire book, you might check out Twitterature: The World's Greatest Books in Twenty Tweets or Less. Or perhaps you prefer a more graphic approach to literature. In that case you might enjoy the beginnings of an online graphic novel at www.ulyssesseen.com. Happy Bloomsday.

My new favorite thing...

That would be my Sansa Clip MP3 player. When we first started offering Overdrive downloadable audiobooks, I spent a lot of time researching the best device and talking to friends about what worked well for them. I wanted something with a display screen and I wanted to be able to easily bookmark the point where I stopped listening. Nothing seemed right, but I ended up purchasing a fairly expensive Sansa product that was supposed to allow you to mark your place. I could never figure out how to make it actually do that, and ended up abandoning it.

But now I have a Sansa Clip, and I think it is perfect. It costs 1/4 of what my first MP3 player cost, it has a small (but adequate) display, it is easy to bookmark, it's tiny--maybe only one inch square, and right now I have five books on it and it still has lots of room. This weekend I had it going about six hours each day as I worked out in my garden and listened to Ian Rankin's The Complaints, and it was still holding a pretty good charge.

Now I'm hoping the weather will improve so I can spend more time outdoors listening to books.