etc.

Before I begin…: I’m pretty sure I read Last Orders some years ago but I can’t recall for certain. Which is part of the reason why I started reviewing stuff here, my memory today is better than it ever was, but that’s besides. The reason why my brain nudged recollection is because Swift’s style seemed so familiar, so edge of the brain, like a song you hear for the second time and frown to recall where and when you heard it first. So anyway, either I’ve read Last Orders or Swift’s style is ubiquitous, which I seriously doubt.

This book is a-day-in-the-life-of George Webb, former cop turned private investigator, only most of the events in question actually happened two years prior, so it’s really a day-in-the-past-of, juxtaposed seamlessly and artfully with the present day, the two-year anniversary of said events (got all that?). I really enjoy narrative that is compressed into a very short span of time, it’s one of my favourite literary techniques and almost always sucks me right in. And not to give anything away, but the events themselves are tragic and there isn’t a single character in the novel that is not singularly touched by that tragedy, but in Swift’s hands it’s pure poetry.

It’s been one of those weeks, you know the kind. My head is swimming with an epic laundry-list of things I want to do, need to do, work things, home things, pleasurable things, things that have been started and not finished, laundry list did I say? Laundry indeed.

I’m not quite sure how it is that I forget that work gets busy in February, it’s supposed to get busy, that’s the way things work at an academic library, students have things to do and often, they do them at the library. Not that I don’t appreciate being busy, it makes the time pass doesn’t it? February already and I missed Groundhog Day altogether, is the weather getting better? I wouldn’t know.

But busy-ness also means that I have no time to do the things that I want to do, work things, fun things: the display for Freedom to Read week, an information/media literacy module for our communications studies students to open their eyes to the perils of media conglogmeracy, making our library news page bloggy, implementing a content management system for our online research guides, and all the rest of that wholesome library work. I am acutely aware that these are all good things, and wanting to do them is a good thing, and I’m eager for April when I’ll have the time to do most of it.

I don’t know how you non-librarians put up with all this libraryness. Both of you.

I’m nothing if not good on promises, so here’s one fulfilled. And I’ve gone from link organising at mybookmarks to deli.cio.us, where I signed up early enough to use my first name as a username. This never happens, friends. Lastly, I’m now posting library stories at LISNews.com which, for you, is another good thing because it could possibly mean that I’ll be waxing librarian a little less over here.

Or possibly not.

It’s a right-wing librarian. I never knew such a thing existed.