Some interesting recent library finds
While straightening books today, I came across a very interesting title that I wanted to share. Coming of Age In Second Life, An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human, by Tom Boellstorff. This guy is an actual anthropology prof and teaches it. He spent two years studying the people who populate Second Life, embedding himself there by creating the avatar Tom Bukowski. The back cover has this bio: "Tom Bukowski was born on June 3, 2004, and has been conducting anthropological research in Second Life since that time. His home, Ehtnographia, is located in the Dowden region of Second Life. He is a fan of the game Tringo and enjoys floating across Second Life landscape in his hot air balloon." The book looks like an interesting read. Published by Princeton University Press. I particularly wanted to share this since I know there are some current/former SL players among my friends here.
Last week I came across Perestroika by Mikhail Gorbachev, the former leader of Russia. Sadly, it was in the form of an inter-library loan request. The sad part was that it was requested by a prison, and I only have a hard-back in my stacks and most prisons can only accept paperbacks as the prisoners can turn cardboard into shivs. Copyright 1987, so written while the Soviet Union was still standing, before the Berlin Wall fell. I'll get to it... someday?
I Buried Billy. I don't have the author off-hand, a Mexican dude. This guy was a friend of Billy the Kid, the notorious outlaw of Southern New Mexico, knew him in his late years and was one of the first to get the news that Billy had been killed. He went out, bought a suit and a shirt, claimed the body, and laid him out and buried him. It's a memoir of his last days with Billy. The guy went on to become one of New Mexico's first state legislators. This book is one of the only - perhaps THE only - written eye-witness accounts of Billy the Kid! Myself, I've never liked the glorification of BtK, everything I've read about him I interpreted him as a hood and nothing to be respected. I want to read this book to see if there's another angle that I'm not aware of. I'm really looking forward to this book coming back so I can check it out.
I don't remember if I've mentioned these before. The Collected Speeches of Malcolm X. This book collects six or seven of the later speeches of Malcolm, one from before he left the Nation of Islam and the rest from after. Another book for my 'to get to eventually' list. I still haven't watched that movie.
Back to the Western genre, we have a book called The Earps Talk, it collects the courtroom testimonies of Wyatt Earp, his brothers, and Doc Holliday after the Gunfight at the OK Coral!
I'm currently reading a book called Misquoting Jesus, written by a devout Christian scholar who learned Greek, Latin, and Hebrew in order to gain access to old documents and study them directly. He puts forth that it's impossible to know what the Bible says because not only do we not have access to the original source documents, we don't have the copies of the source documents. And the copies of the copies of the copies of the source documents have so many errors, and errors when compared to each other, that it becomes this giant mish-mash. The inconsistencies pile higher and higher. I discovered this one while cruising our catalog, looking something up for whatever reason.
Last week I came across Perestroika by Mikhail Gorbachev, the former leader of Russia. Sadly, it was in the form of an inter-library loan request. The sad part was that it was requested by a prison, and I only have a hard-back in my stacks and most prisons can only accept paperbacks as the prisoners can turn cardboard into shivs. Copyright 1987, so written while the Soviet Union was still standing, before the Berlin Wall fell. I'll get to it... someday?
I Buried Billy. I don't have the author off-hand, a Mexican dude. This guy was a friend of Billy the Kid, the notorious outlaw of Southern New Mexico, knew him in his late years and was one of the first to get the news that Billy had been killed. He went out, bought a suit and a shirt, claimed the body, and laid him out and buried him. It's a memoir of his last days with Billy. The guy went on to become one of New Mexico's first state legislators. This book is one of the only - perhaps THE only - written eye-witness accounts of Billy the Kid! Myself, I've never liked the glorification of BtK, everything I've read about him I interpreted him as a hood and nothing to be respected. I want to read this book to see if there's another angle that I'm not aware of. I'm really looking forward to this book coming back so I can check it out.
I don't remember if I've mentioned these before. The Collected Speeches of Malcolm X. This book collects six or seven of the later speeches of Malcolm, one from before he left the Nation of Islam and the rest from after. Another book for my 'to get to eventually' list. I still haven't watched that movie.
Back to the Western genre, we have a book called The Earps Talk, it collects the courtroom testimonies of Wyatt Earp, his brothers, and Doc Holliday after the Gunfight at the OK Coral!
I'm currently reading a book called Misquoting Jesus, written by a devout Christian scholar who learned Greek, Latin, and Hebrew in order to gain access to old documents and study them directly. He puts forth that it's impossible to know what the Bible says because not only do we not have access to the original source documents, we don't have the copies of the source documents. And the copies of the copies of the copies of the source documents have so many errors, and errors when compared to each other, that it becomes this giant mish-mash. The inconsistencies pile higher and higher. I discovered this one while cruising our catalog, looking something up for whatever reason.