#libarians

WELP, TIME FOR A NEW THERAPIST.

Born February 1, 1901, Joplin, MO

The Weary Blues

By Langston Hughes

Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,

Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,

I heard a Negro play.

Down on Lenox Avenue the other night

By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light

He did a lazy sway. . . .

He did a lazy sway. . . .

To the tune o’ those Weary Blues.

With his ebony hands on each ivory key

He made that poor piano moan with melody.

O Blues!

Swaying to and fro on his rickety stool

He played that sad raggy tune like a musical fool.

Sweet Blues!

Coming from a black man’s soul.

O Blues!

In a deep song voice with a melancholy tone

I heard that Negro sing, that old piano moan—

“Ain’t got nobody in all this world,

Ain’t got nobody but ma self.

I’s gwine to quit ma frownin’

And put ma troubles on the shelf.”

Thump, thump, thump, went his foot on the floor.

He played a few chords then he sang some more—

“I got the Weary Blues

And I can’t be satisfied.

Got the Weary Blues

And can’t be satisfied—

I ain’t happy no mo’

And I wish that I had died.”

And far into the night he crooned that tune.

The stars went out and so did the moon.

The singer stopped playing and went to bed

While the Weary Blues echoed through his head.

by James Davis Nicoll

I was an early adopter of ebooks, in part because of my terrible eyesight, but mostly because I happened to break into reviewing just before the 2001 anthrax attacks. Fear of contaminated packages increased shipping time for cases of manuscripts from four days to forty. Electronic books (which in those long-ago days were really just doc files) provided instant gratification.

At one point I even considered ditching paper entirely in favour of electronic formats. In addition to the instant gratification angle, one does not have to worry about ebooks overloading the floors of one’s residence. One can carry a few thousand ebooks in one’s pocket. One can—and for me, this is the killer app—adjust font size. Ebooks are great and I would defend them to your last breath.

That said, an unexpected side effect of having produced James Nicoll Reviews for eight-plus years and almost 2300 reviews, as well as a recent foray back into roleplaying game texts, has been rediscovering my love of paper books. There are a number reasons why this is so. Let’s look at my reasons, starting with mere personal tastes before proceeding to reasons that may be more universal.

Books are, as artifacts, more pleasing to my eye than ebooks. This may come down to the happenstance that my preferred e-reader can’t handle colour. That impacts cover art. Book covers are conceived in colour. Some covers may function just as well in black and white but many, perhaps most, do not.

Hi there, anon! I assume this is in reference to my reblog of @misfit-librarian‘s post featuring the faux copyright page from The Pigeon HAS to Go to School!.

As far as I’m aware, authors and publishers can include jokes and generally get as silly as they like with their copyright pages, so long as they include the actual CIP data somewhere in the book. (Publishing folks or more experienced catalogers, feel free to correct me.)

8,000 Library Jobs Have Disappeared in the U.K.

(via GalleyCat)

This book of martyrs from 1563 has some interesting repairs. 

In the first photo, you can see a slip of paper pasted in to replace a missing line of text - it was coming loose when I took this photo, but has since been reattached with wheat paste.

The second photo shows a close-up of the front cover.  A piece of the original wooden board chipped off, and someone in the repaired the loss with several layers of binder’s board.

I love seeing signs of use and trying to decipher the book’s past using this kind of evidence!

If you’d like to know more about this book, or if you’d like to visit it in special collections, here is the catalog record.

My heroes. Not really. Well maybe.