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Watha T. Daniel/Shaw Community Library

The Benning Branch of the D.C. Public Library was erected at 3935 Benning Road N.E. as the sixth in a series of branch libraries funded under the D.C. Public Works Program. The building was designed by architect Clark T. Harmon in cooperation with the...Read more

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  • The New New Post-Post-Cyberpunk Bonanza
    Saturday, November 7, 2009
    Makers, by Cory Doctorow
    Book Cover, Makers, by Cory DoctorowMakers
    by Cory Doctorow
    New York : Tor, 2009.
    Book Cover, Makers, by Cory DoctorowMakers
    by Cory Doctorow
    New York : Tor, 2009.

    I have been hearing Cory Doctorow's name in various contexts for a few years, now. As a fan of cyberpunk and post-cyberpunk, how could I not have? Yet I never read his work until now. With no clue what to look for, I was happily surprised by Makers.

    The book, which was serialized by Tor before its actual publication, bears the cute tag-line, "a Novel of the Whirlwind Changes to Come", and so it seems to be. Beginning in a future so near you actually don't know it's not right now, the story follows an economic, technological and social trajectory into a future which wouldn't make half as much sense if you weren't right there to see it.

    The genius of the story is that, if you have any working knowledge of recent history, that's exactly how the last hundred-and-change years have gone. In some ways, Doctorow's future is more believable because of its retrospective qualities. Another side effect of the story's modern origin is the giddy hilarity that accompanies its creations; the best satire hurts so good because of its dreadful familiarity. Makers achieves this with the same flair and foresightedness of Bruce Sterling's Distraction, or William Gibson's Pattern Recognition.

    Reading this book caused a litany of vocabulary words to create themselves in my head, a cluster of blog tags waiting to be born. Postmodern came up a lot, but then post-postmodern could equally apply. Ana-Randian, anarcho-libertarian, post-post-post-feminist, neorealist, techno-comedy: none of them necessarily apply, but all of them came from an instinctive need to create some simple descriptors for this literary equivalent of the portmanteau. Try it - you'll find yourself bathing in the salty waters of Doctorow's compelling ambiguity.

    That said, I couldn't help but wonder about the suspiciously familiar main characters, and (perhaps not so strangely) self-referential philosophies of the "makers" whose lives are the center of the book. Many of the themes in Makers, including the use of Disney as a foil and example of dizzyingly vast corporate monstrosity, are reminiscent of Doctorow's other projects. Not that I mind. Neal Stephenson is my favorite author, and he does it all the time.
  • "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"
    Thursday, November 5, 2009

    do androids dream of electric sheep cover art I just finished reading the Philip K. Dick novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

    do androids dream of electric sheep cover art I just finished reading the Philip K. Dick novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? It seems like half the staff were reading it all at the same time, and a couple of us watched Blade Runner, the film inspired by the book. It's been sitting on my bookshelf at home for years now, and I've been wanting to read it for a while. Apparently the time was right, and it made its way into my backpack, and today I finished it.

    It was a really great novel. Nobody plays mind games with the reader, or with his characters, like Philip K. Dick does. The world exists in a state of post-nuclear destruction. The sky is obliterated by radioactive dust; most all life on earth is dead, mutated or on the verge of extinction. Most of humanity has zoomed off to settle other, non-nuclear worlds with the help of android slaves to build settlements and take care of the major labor.

    Well, the android models keep getting smarter and smarter, and it becomes more and more difficult to tell androids from humans. So, in order to detect whether or not someone is human or android, human police have to administer a test to prove the essential humanity of the individual based on empathetic responses. Rick Deckard works for the San Francisco police department as a bounty hunter who takes down rogue androids. He's been assigned to take out the remaining six androids who escaped from  captivity on Mars.

    Due to the near extinction of most all animal life, humans on Earth have mostly become followers of an  empathy cult whose leader, Wilber Mercer, was a lover of animals. People strive to own and care for living creatures, even though the cost of purchasing, much less caring for, a pet is exorbitantly high given their rarity. Not only do they strive to become pet owners and caretakers, they also spend time "fusing" with the others in the cult through the empathy box, where they share each other's emotions as they climb the hill of sacrifice with Mercer.

    This becomes the lynch pin in determining whether or not someone is an android. How do they react to animal death? How do they feel about the products that were derived from killing something extraordinarily rare? My own brain goes to thinking about sociopaths like Dexter who have no regard for life, animal or human, because they lack empathetic response. The Voigt-Kampff test they use in the book (and the film) measures how they respond to certain triggering words or situations related to animal cruelty and the death of humans. Interestingly enough, The Wave Magazine in San Francisco used the Voigt-Kampff questions when they spoke with candidates for Mayor of the city. The results were incredibly interesting.

  • National Novel Writing Month Begins Sunday
    Friday, October 30, 2009

    NaNoWriMo logoIt's my favorite time of year! Well, after Poetry Month, Earth Day, Pride, Halloween, Christmas, New Year and Easter.... Okay, it's an awesome time of the year!

    November is National Novel Writing Month. Just like last year, we'll be having NaNoWriMo support groups on Saturday afternoons all throughout November to help you crank through your novel.

    NaNoWriMo logoIt's my favorite time of year! Well, after Poetry Month, Earth Day, Pride, Halloween, Christmas, New Year and Easter.... Okay, it's an awesome time of the year!

    November is National Novel Writing Month. Just like last year, we'll be having NaNoWriMo support groups on Saturday afternoons all throughout November to help you crank through your novel.

    So swing by, grab a computer, pop in your flash drive full of your awesome book and write write write! Just drop in, and we'll do everything we can to help you along. We've got copies of Chris Baty's book No Plot, No Problem and Victoria Schmidt's Book in a Month. Make sure you put one on hold if you want to get one in time.

    Here's the schedule:

    NaNoWriMo Meetups at Watha T. Daniel Library

    Saturdays
    11/7: 1 p.m.
    11/14: 1 p.m.
    11/21: 1 p.m.
    11/28: 1 p.m.

  • Pimp My Bookcart: Opposing Viewpoints
    Friday, October 30, 2009

    Bookcart cityscape at nightBookcart stars and stripes and chainsBookcart blue tree with red leaves

    Bookcart cityscape at nightBookcart stars and stripes and chainsBookcart blue tree with red leaves

    Pimp My Bookcart is a national project run by the Web comic Unshelved. I've been wanting to do this project for years, and finally, this last Saturday, I had the great opportunity to work with some of the neighborhood kids and Liz from the Capitol Letters Writing Center, and together we all designed this awesome bookcart. Each of us came up with a plan, and we brought all our ideas together into one sweet design.

    As you can see above, one of the side panels is a city scape at night. We did it with a three layer effect of the night sky (with a little bit of sunlight there), a series of high rise buildings in purple, fronted by some lower buildings in blue. All with glowing yellow windows and doors.

    The other side was originally just a tree, but since one of us did a flame design, we decided to make a kind of Dr. Seussian tree in blue bark with orange and red leaves on a yellow background.

    The shelf panels are two different designs, one from each of the students who worked on the design part of the project. Deondre came up with the stars and stripes pattern in green and blue, and James was really into a chain link pattern in black and red. So Deondre got the upright part of the shelf, and James got the flat part of the shelf. For the chains we actually draped the chains that we used in our Banned Books Week display to form a pattern on the shelf, and we painted directly onto and through the chain. It was a stroke of genius on James' part.

    All of the designs (except the chain) were patterned in poster board stencils, and the color is all from indoor/outdoor spray paint. Let me tell you how many kids we had wanting work on the project once we started spray painting the cart! Everyone was rushing up to paint on it.

    I don't think we were really looking at all the implications behind the piece as we were putting it together, but I think there are some great metaphors in here about nature vs. the city and freedom vs. slavery. Hence why I decided to name this bookcart "Opposing Viewpoints." I'm really proud of our kids for coming up with something so awesome.

    What do you think?

  • Bose Presents Berlioz
    Tuesday, October 20, 2009

    I bought a nice pair of Bose headphones and they changed my life. The sound quality was so good that I decided it was finally time to jump back into listening to classical music. Classical recordings, even the smaller label records, are almost always of extreme audiophile quality. Soon I was hovering over my favorite orchestras again, hearing every nuance and harmonic that distinguishes one version of the Eroica, for example, from the next.

    I bought a nice pair of Bose headphones and they changed my life. The sound quality was so good that I decided it was finally time to jump back into listening to classical music. Classical recordings, even the smaller label records, are almost always of extreme audiophile quality. Soon I was hovering over my favorite orchestras again, hearing every nuance and harmonic that distinguishes one version of the Eroica, for example, from the next. In high school I was obsessed with Beethoven, and through the master was introduced to several other early romance composers including one of my favorites—Hector Berlioz.

    For a little background, Berlioz is one of the few legendary composers who was not also a performer. He studied music from treatises and sheet music rather than being groomed at the piano bench like virtuoso performers Liszt, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn and so many others. He had to study in secret because his parents expected him to be a doctor. How lucky we are that the doctor thing didn’t work out!

    I was on the Metro the other day listening to one of my favorite pieces, the second movement of the Symphonie Fantasique, when an elderly gentleman tugged on my sleeve and asked what I was listening to. I guess he wasn’t scared off by the tattoos and wanted to know what music could possibly set this long-haired roughneck’s foot tapping, and provoking an ear-to-ear smile. When I told him it was Berlioz, he told me a great story.

    When the French Revolution of 1830 was beginning, Hector was at his desk in his third-floor apartment in Paris working feverishly on the Fantastique. He was at a critical juncture in a piece that would radically redefine what future orchestras would look and sound like. He had doubled the number of tubas in his orchestra because, well, he wanted more tubas. This was unheard of at the time, but Berlioz was somewhat of a radical himself. So, through the sound of cannon fire he hurried to transcribe the sounds in his head before the whole city erupted. He worked well into the night by lamplight, until finally the bullets were whizzing over his roof and smashing through the windows of neighboring houses, the tenants having long left Paris fearing the violence. Finally Berlioz realized it was time to leave, so he rolled up his manuscripts still wet with ink and ran down the stairs and into the street with pistol in hand, ready to handle any hoodlums looting and robbing in Paris that night.

    How cool! To add to the drama, it has been established that, years later, the composer had plotted to dress up as a woman, slip into the house of the woman with whom he was obsessively in love and kill her, her fiancé and her mother. This plot was foiled when, in the carriage halfway to her house, he realized he’d left part of his disguise behind, after which he
    realized the foolishness of his plan and gave up.

    These unexpected little vignettes add a sense of realness and humanity to these larger-than-life figures, and to the recordings we listen to. Now, whenever I listen to the 2nd movement of the Fantastique, which is so light and lush, I picture old Hector jogging down the dark cobblestone streets of Paris with this very music under his arm. Who knows…maybe it was the same pistol!

    --Casey Danielson

  • Mad Men at DC Public Library
    Monday, October 19, 2009

    Mad Men PosterIf you haven't been watching Mad Men on AMC you are missing out on one of the best written, best acted shows on television today. You can get up to speed with Don, Betty, Joan, Peggy, Pete and the crew by checking out seasons 1 and 2 from your local DC Public Library.

    Mad Men PosterIf you haven't been watching Mad Men on AMC you are missing out on one of the best written, best acted shows on television today. You can get up to speed with Don, Betty, Joan, Peggy, Pete and the crew by checking out seasons 1 and 2 from your local DC Public Library.

    But we've got way more than just the videos. Being an avid fan of the show I've compiled a list of books that are mentioned throughout the course of the show that we have here in the collection, along with some other period pieces and contextual works that I'm sure you'll find enjoyable, if not amusing.

    Check it out.


    Books Mentioned in Mad Men

    • Lady Chatterly’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence
    • Exodus by Leon Uris
    • Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
    • Meditations in an Emergency by Frank O’Hara / Call Number: 811 O36M
    • The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
    • History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon / Call Number: 937 G439H


    The 1960s

    • The 1960s: Examining Pop Culture ed. by David M. Haugen and Matthew J. Box Call Number: 973.923 N714A
    • The 1960's: American Popular Culture Through History by Edward J. Rielly / Call Number: 973.923 R555
    • One Minute to Midnight : Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War by Michael Dobbs. / Call Number: 973.922 D632
    • We Shall Overcome by Herb Boyd, Narrated by Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee. / Call Number: 323.1196 B7896
    • I Have A Dream: Writings and Speeches That Changed the World by Martin Luther King Jr., ed. by James M. Washington / Call Number: 332.092 K53I
    • On the Road to Freedom: a Guided Tour of the Civil Rights Trail by Charles E. Cobb, Jr. / Call Number: 323.1196 C653


    Kennedy v. Nixon

    • The Making of a Catholic President : Kennedy vs. Nixon 1960 by Shaun A. Casey. / Call Number: 322.1097 C338
    • 1960 : LBJ vs. JFK vs. Nixon : the Epic Campaign That Forged Three Presidencies by David Pietrusza. / Call Number: 324.973 P626N


    Camelot

    • John F. Kennedy: A Biography by Michael O'Brien / Call Number: 92 K348OB
    • Brothers: the Hidden History of the Kennedy Years by David Talbot / Call Number: 973.922 T138 >
    • The Kennedys : Portrait of a Family by Richard Avedon by Shannon Thomas Perich / Call Number: 973.922 A961
    • The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe by J. Randy Taraborrelli. / Call Number: 92 M7534T


    Advertising

    • The Complete Idiot's Guide to Copywriter's Words and Phrases by Kathy Kleidermacher. / Call Number: 659.132 K63
    • Brand Failures: the Truth About the 100 Biggest Branding Mistakes of All Time by Matt Haig / Call Number: 658.827 H149
    • Don't Think Pink: What Really Makes Women Buy--and How to Increase Your Share of This Crucial Market by Lisa Johnson / Call Number: 658.834 J67
    • Adland: Searching for the Meaning of Life on a Branded Planet by James P. Othmer / Call Number: 659.1 O87
    • Consuming Kids: Protecting our Children From the Onslaught of Marketing and Advertising by Susan Linn / Call Number: 658.8342 L758

    Socializing

    • Mr. Boston Official Bartender's Guide by edited by Anthony Giglio with Jim Meehan ; photography by Ben Fink. / Call Number: 641.874 M679A
    • The Perfect Buzz: the Essential Guide to Boozing, Bars and Bad Behavior by David Bramwell. / Call Number: 394.13 P438
    • The Appetizers and Canapés Cookbook by Lillian Langseth-Christensen and Carol Sturm Smith, Illus. by Lillian Langseth-Christensen. (1968) / Call Number: 641.81 L285
    • Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior by Judith Martin. / Call Number: 395 M381A
  • Bats at the Library!
    Thursday, October 8, 2009

    Bats at the libraryAt today's story time we read Bats at the Library by Brian Lies. Afterward we made little felt bats to hang around the children's room and to take home.

    If you want to make a felt bat of your very own it's super simple to do. All you need is

        * A piece of felt
        * A pipe cleaner

    Bats at the libraryAt today's story time we read Bats at the Library by Brian Lies. Afterward we made little felt bats to hang around the children's room and to take home.

    If you want to make a felt bat of your very own it's super simple to do. All you need is

        * A piece of felt
        * A pipe cleaner
        * A pair of scissors &
        * A piece of string

    First cut your felt into a rectangle.

    Then clip out the triangles shown in the illustration below.

    Bat Shape

    Then cut four small holes where the straight lines are in the middle of the wings and on each side of the bat body.

    Next, take your pipe cleaner and thread it through the holes in and out of the wings and the body of the bat.

    Bat FlyingFold the loose ends of the pipe cleaner into the middle of your bat and clip the loose ends onto the center support of the bat body.

    Now bend your pipe cleaner to shape the bat wings like your bat is flying.

    Finally, put a string onto the pipe cleaner in the middle of the body so your bat can fly.

    And there you have it. Bats at the library!

  • New Books on Disc
    Wednesday, September 23, 2009

    Check out these great new books-on-disc @ Watha T. Daniel:

    • That Old Cape Magic, by Richard Russo; read by Arthur Morey
    • My Sister's Ex, by Cydney Rax; read by Bahni Turpin and Adenrele Ojo
    • Cemetery Dance, by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child; read by Scott Brick
    • Fatal Secrets, by Allison Brennan; read by Ann Marie Lee
    • Cutting Edge, by Allison Brennan; read by Ann Marie Lee
    • Satchel: the Life and Times of an American Legend, by Larry Tye; read by Dominic Hoffman

    Check out these great new books-on-disc @ Watha T. Daniel:

    • That Old Cape Magic, by Richard Russo; read by Arthur Morey
    • My Sister's Ex, by Cydney Rax; read by Bahni Turpin and Adenrele Ojo
    • Cemetery Dance, by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child; read by Scott Brick
    • Fatal Secrets, by Allison Brennan; read by Ann Marie Lee
    • Cutting Edge, by Allison Brennan; read by Ann Marie Lee
    • Satchel: the Life and Times of an American Legend, by Larry Tye; read by Dominic Hoffman
    • The Angel's Game, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon; read by Dan Stevens
    • Daniel X: Watch the Skies, by James Patterson and Ned Rust; read by Milo Ventimiglia

  • The Scalinata in Literature
    Saturday, September 19, 2009

    I had the weirdest coincidence this last weekend, in that I was reading two separate books that take place in two totally different time periods and both of them mentioned the exact same architectural feature in Rome.

    I had the weirdest coincidence this last weekend, in that I was reading two separate books that take place in two totally different time periods and both of them mentioned the exact same architectural feature in Rome.

    The Spanish Stairs (Scalinata della Trinità dei Monti) were built in the 1720s to connect the Piazza di Spagna to the church of Trinità dei Monti. I have a picture that shows the fountain in the Piazza, the church above--and on the right is the Keats-Shelley house. That's right, John Keats and Percy Shelley. John Keats lived his last days on earth looking out the window over the Spanish Stairs.

    And that's where the story gets interesting.

    I started reading Tim Powers' novel The Stress of Her Regard a while ago, and still haven't quite finished it. The book is set in the heyday of the English romantic poets, and Keats, Byron and Shelley are main players in the story. The novel follows their lives, and explores what truly was the muse that inspired these greatest of poets to craft their works. Powers' explanation is that the muse was actually a vampiric creature known to the Greeks as a Lamia (note: link contains nude artwork). As the creature slowly drains the life from the poets, she also inspires them to greater heights of artistry. But over time the poets begin to show the strain on their lives, and eventually they crave to be released from this burden. The scene with Keats plays out with the fantasy creature begging to be let in to keep her lover alive as he dies while gazing over the Scalinata. I totally have not given away even a fraction of this epic fantasy drama by revealing this information. Just know that the rest of it is just as weird and exciting. It took me about 17 years to get around to reading this book, but it was worth the wait.

    Halfway through reading The Stress of Her Regard, I got one of those *sigh* moments and just couldn't be bothered to continue reading it. SO I put down Stress and picked up something completely different. For no particular reason I was drawn to Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination. I had no idea what it was about: it had just been sitting on my bookshelf at home for too long.

    It's the 26th century and Gulliver Foyle is a space marine of sorts who gets stranded out in deep space with no way home. One day while waiting for who knows how long, he spies the passing starship "Vorga" and signals for a ride. Vorga ignores his plea, and Gully begins to plot his revenge against the ship. While Foyle is tracking down the crew of the ship to find out who gave the order, he finds himself in Italy, looking to meet up with one of the former crew members, where else, but on the Scalinata!

    I can't tell you how weird it was for me to just accidentally read two totally different books, by two totally different authors, set about 700 years apart, where they shared the exact same location at a midway point through the story. Just absolutely bizarre.

    Both of the books are extremely interesting, but both for different reasons. The Stress of Her Regard is great for people who have a penchant for the romantic poets and a taste for the Gothic. There are moments that are positively gruesome, and the language is witty and florid. The Stars My Destination is more of a sci-fi vendetta adventure story. The story jumps from place to place quickly, and the ending is completely surreal. It's an absolute page turner.

    Check it out!
                                                                                                                                          --Eric Riley 

  • Politics of the Harlem Renaissance
    Thursday, September 10, 2009
    Marcus Garvey and Alain Locke
    There will be a discussion group meeting on the Harlem Renaissance on Monday, September 14, 2009.
    There will be a discussion group meeting on the Harlem Renaissance on Monday, September 14, 2009.

    The Harlem Renaissance is the name of a well celebrated artistic resurgence of African-American art and literature in the 1920s. However, the Harlem Renaissance also involved the flourishing of a new political consciousness among African-Americans. This political/cultural consciousness was organized around the new sense of identity identified by Alain Locke, one of the theoreticians of the movement, as the concept of the “New Negro.” The term “New Negro” expressed the growing awareness by black Americans of their own powers and abilities.

    One of other exponents of this new black consciousness was Marcus Mosiah Garvey Jr., publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, Black Nationalist, Pan-Africanist and orator. Marcus Garvey was founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL) that organized millions of African-Americans.
                                                                                                                        --Paul Sweeney

Watha T. Daniel/Shaw

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