Featured Book: Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke

Publisher: Tor Books
Format: Trade Paperback
Pages: 1024 pages
Published: August 2006

Synopsis: There used to be magic in England, magic governed by the mysterious Raven King. However, magic has fallen into obscurity until two men of prophecy appear: Mr. Norrell, a paranoid recluse, and his pupil Jonathan Strange, an insouciant young man. Together, and with friends and enemies, they change the landscape of English magic.

Review: What can I say about this whopping monster of a book except brilliant, brilliant, brilliant? I heard that it took Susanna Clarke many years to write JS&MN and I believe it. The story is full of imagination, complex history, and believable backgrounds all wrapped up in language that matches the 1800s setting. You meet Wellington, Byron; you see the Napoleonic Wars. Yet in the same pitch-perfect language Clarke can summon humour, horror, unease, and wonder. I don’t think there is a single emotion she can’t pull out of you. Clarke doesn’t resort to cheap tricks to do it. No explosions or excessive drama. Just genuine low-key writing that delights as much as it astonishes.

I also like the representation of magic, especially how the magic Strange and Norrell used had its roots in the Raven King and in Fairy. Clarke’s Fairy is as Fairy should be: brilliant and unnerving. You should never feel right in your skin when fairies are about.

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell is a long book. For anyone who spends a lot of time in the Hart House Library, it's a great project to tackle, and well worth the efforts.

Strange! Arabella! Norrell! Stephen Black! Vinculus! Childermass! England!

- N.S

I Shall Not Hate Reading

I Shall Not Hate Reading

A Gaza Doctor's Journey of Hope for Humanitarian Transformation

Details: Following the tragic death of his three daughters, Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish set out to change the world. A universally renowned medical doctor, humanitarian, scholar and author, Dr. Abuelaish’s numerous honors include two Nobel Peace Prize nominations. In a touching and inspirational presentation, “The Gaza Doctor”, shares his incredible story of loss, love and an unwavering devotion to restoring human dignity. Join us for an empowering and transformative evening which celebrates the potential for worldwide peace and understanding.
Refreshments will be served.
When: Jan. 24, 2012 at 5:30 pm
Where: Hart House Library
Cost: Free

Featured Book-Room by Emma Donoghue

Room by Emma Donoghue

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 321 pages
Published: September 13, 2010

Call No: HH F DON

Synopsis

To five year-old Jack, Room is the world...

It's where he was born. It's where he and Ma eat and sleep and play and learn. There are endless wonders that let loose Jack's imagination-the snake under Bed that he constructs out of eggshells; the imaginary world projected through the TV; the coziness of Wardrobe beneath Ma's clothes, where she tucks him in safely at night, in case Old Nick comes.

Room is home to Jack, but to Ma, it's the prison where she's been held since she was nineteen-for seven long years. Through her fierce love for her son, she has created a life for him in that eleven-by-eleven foot space. But Jack's curiosity is building alongside ma's own desperation, and she knows that Room cannot contain either indefinitely...

Told in the inventive, funny, and poignant voice of Jack, Room is a celebration of resilience-and a powerful story of a mother and son whose love lets them survive the impossible.

~Book Jacket

Review

Astounding. An original story that has a "ripped-from-the-headlines" horror to it, Donoghue through the wonderful Jack manages to convey equal parts horror and joy. The narration from Jack is touching and innocent, and gives the story more power than if it were narrated from Ma's perspective. The love that exists between him and Ma are enough to propel this novel into a classic mother-son story, but the context of the novel and the themes make it searing prose that can't be forgotten.

Room is a wonderfully written story that will stay with you long after you finish it.

This is not a light read and there are those who have been unable to finish it due to the dark subject matter. I would recommend this book for those interested in sociology, family relations, psychology and anyone who likes a good read.

-K.C

Featured Book - I and Thou

Featured Book is a new series of blog posts by our librarians about books in our collection which we find particularly interesting, noteworthy or compelling. We’ll tell you a bit about what we’ve read, and why we liked it.

Martin Buber

I and Thou

Call number: HH PHL BUB

It has been quite some time since I read Martin Buber’s “I and Thou”, but the book made such an impression on me that I remember it quite distinctly. I remember the sense of having something explained to me that I felt I already knew in some way, but had not yet articulated. Books like that are special and rare and always remembered.

As a student of religious studies at McGill, I had heard about Buber, but did not know much about Hasidism or Jewish mysticism. Buber’s idea of dialogue as a religious practice was novel to me at the time, and changed my perception of religious experience. It showed how openness to experience, rather than faith or doctrine, can be fundamental to religious practice. That idea that religion can be experiential is a perspective that is open minded, engaged and accessible.

I subsequently read other books by Buber, but none matched the immediacy and passionate nature of “I and Thou”. It is the book that defined his career, and it rightfully became a classic of theology and religious studies. I think it would be interesting to anyone with an interest in Judaism or religious dialogues or religious studies more generally.

-M.E.

Gardening in the Library?!

Gardening in the Library: Weeding at Hart House Library

By Katya Pereyaslavska (Library Curator) and Stephen Spong (Special Projects)

Hart House Library, nestled away in a quiet corner of the University of Toronto’s Hart House, is a unique and very special collection. Established in 1919 by the Massey family, the library has served a diverse community over the past ninety-two years, reflecting the changing faces of Hart House. Currently, the library, which would fit right in at Hogwarts, holds some 5,000 volumes on its intricately carved and stained-wood shelves; however, it is only now that a proper weeding project has been initiated with the help of twenty student volunteers.

The most difficult aspect of this project is to actually get started on it or, perhaps more accurately, deciding how it should be initiated and how to implement it most effectively. What is to be done with all the past donations comprising of outdated textbooks and poorly-maintained cheap editions of Huckleberry Finn? Should they be assessed or should we just create a “sale truck” where volumes in question can be sold off to raise funds for the library? Are they worth anything? Should they be donated instead? Where do we even start?! These questions and more make laying the groundwork a delicate operation.

While attempting to come to terms with this conundrum, we came upon Zotero, which offered the solution we were looking for. Available as a small, free download, Zotero – a plug-in for Firefox, rather than a stand-alone program – allows one to extract and edit library records from any catalogue record viewed in the browser – from WorldCat, public and academic libraries and even Library Thing where the Hart House Library recently uploaded its catalogue.

Having offered several training sessions and sent out links to online tutorials, the next step was dividing volunteers into teams responsible for specific sections of the library. From there, we have created subject-specific folders corresponding with the appropriate section of the library, and then each one has subfolders named “replace”, “deaccession” and “not found.” This allows for a simple, methodical approach.

The “replace” folder is intended to include classics and must-haves for our library that are currently in poor condition or outdated. Due to the increasingly high cost of book repairs and our modest budget, the library cannot afford to replace all books which are in poor condition. Our aim is to be able to buy newer and more attractive hardcover volumes to replace shabby and overused paperbacks, instead of spending a fortune on repairs. However, before any volumes from this folder are replaced, we shall run the list by a rare book specialist to advise us as to whether it might contain any valuable items in which case we might decide to splurge on repairs or donate these volumes to the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library at the University of Toronto.

The “deaccession” folder will contain books that are obviously in need of weeding because they are old textbooks or items that do not fit well into the overall character of the collection. The drafting of newly updated Collection Development and Mission Statement documents that were subsequently distributed to the volunteers provides a clear framework within which to work. More often than not assigning sections based on individual background and expertise allows for a more critical approach to weeding as well as encouraging students to actively participate in compiling lists of contributions for acquisitions.

The Hart House Library is currently in the process of working through the sections and waiting for the folders to be filled with lists of books. The wonderful thing about Zotero is that it actually allows for the exporting of content to spreadsheets as well as for the editing of imported records to change publishing information and add notes on anything (which is especially useful for condition reports). This will prove to be quite useful when studying this part of our collection and making joint decisions with administration. Although the library is small, this makes the project all the more manageable, as well as a fantastic training ground for our volunteer-based staff of library students.

Published in the Special Librarian Association's "The Courier"

http://toronto.sla.org/the-courier/volume-48/v48-n2-winter-2011/gardening-in-the-library-weeding-at-hart-house-library

The Chronicles of Canada Series

Now available at the Hart House Library, the Chronicles of Canada Series was intended as a collection of books on Canadian history for popular reading. Notable contributors to the series include Stephen Leacock and William Stewart Wallace, among others, and the series begins from the history of Aboriginals in Canada and ends with the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway. While not regarded as fiction, the prose used throughout most of the books is quite captivating, especially in The Cariboo Trail, a work about the Gold Rush that took place in British Columbian fields, and The War Chief of the Six Nations. Each book can be read in just a few hours, as there are few words per page and many illustrations, so what better way to satiate your curiosity about Canada’s past than to dip into this wonderful series. The books are bound in a decorative cover, which fits perfectly with the library’s historic character.


The series includes:

1 - The Dawn of Canadian History - A Chronicle of Aboriginal Canada
2 - The Mariner of St Malo - A Chronicle of the Voyages of Jacques Cartier
3 - The Founder of New France - A Chronicle of Champlain
4 - The Jesuit Missions - A Chronicle of the Cross in the Wilderness
5 - The Seigneurs of Old Canada - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism
6 - The Great Intendant - A Chronicle of Jean Talon in Canada 1665-1672
7 - The Fighting Governor - A Chronicle of Frontenac
8 - The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760
9 - The Acadian Exiles - A Chronicle of the Land of Evangeline
10 - The Passing of New France - A Chronicle of Montcalm
11 - The Winning of Canada - A Chronicle of Wolf
12 - The Father of British Canada - A Chronicle of Carleton
13 - The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of the Great Migration
14 - The War with the United States - A Chronicle of 1812
15 - The War Chief of the Ottawas - A Chronicle of the Pontiac War
16 - The War Chief of the Six Nations - A Chronicle of Joseph Brant
17 - Tecumseh - A Chronicle of the Last Great Leader of His People
18 - The ''Adventurers of England'' on Hudson Bay - A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North
19 - Pathfinders of the Great Plains - A Chronicle of La Vérendrye and his Sons
20 - Adventurers of the Far North - A Chronicle of the Frozen Seas
21 - The Red River Colony - A Chronicle of the Beginnings of Manitoba
22 - Pioneers of the Pacific Coast - A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters
23 - The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia
25 - The 'Patriotes' of '37 - A Chronicle of the Lower Canada Rebellion
26 - The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe
27 - The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841
28 - The Fathers of Confederation - A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion
29 - The Day of Sir John Macdonald - A Chronicle of the First Prime Minister of the Dominion
30 - The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time
31 - All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways
32 - The Railway Builders - A Chronicle of Overland Highways

Green Books

Hart House Library is holding an eco book drive from March 21 to 28, 2011. "What's an eco book drive?" you might ask...well, I'm glad you did! We are looking for donations (from you! and your friends! and your family! and your colleagues!) of environmentally-themed books to help round out and update the Hart House Library collection.

Since Hart House Library is mainly a browsing library, existing to provide casual pleasure reading for patrons, we are looking for current, stimulating, interesting books on all aspects of environmental living. This could include: books on sustainable living, alternative energy, farming & gardening, composting, eco-tourism, farmer's markets, eco-design, green politics...chances are, if you think it's an eco book, we will too. We are specifically looking for books published since 2000 and in good condition, but no textbooks please.

So go through your shelves at home, and see if you have any eco-themed books that you are prepared to part with and share with the world. For bonus points, send this information to your friends, family and co-workers. Bring your donations to the Hub (the main desk at Hart House) and deposit them in the donation box. With your help, we can create an excellent eco book collection at Hrat House Library!

The details:

Who: Hart House Library
What: Eco Book Drive
Where: Donation box at the Hub (main desk inside the West entrance at 7 Hart House Circle)
When: March 21-28, 2011, 7a.m.-11p.m.
Why: To help build our blooming collection!

Looking forward to perusing all those books. If you have any questions, please contact Val Stevens at val.stevens@utoronto.ca