That darned day again

[altivo]

Split shift definitely makes it more exhausting.

Today the blood drive people were in the library. They are the most inconsiderate users of library space, loud,thoughtless, rude, and often demanding. This time they extended their usual hours by 30 minutes to 6:30. You'd think that they'd still be out well before 8 pm but no, we had to literally chase them out.

Library book club finally met to discuss Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court which they had originally scheduled for last May and kept putting off because none of them had finished the book. I don't think most of them ever did. They all hated it. I can only guess that 19th century writing was too much for them, though generally I find Twain pretty easy, and I thought that book was fairly clever and full of political commentary on modern culture.

Got all the stuff for tomorrow night's spinning demo hauled up there and piled in the staffroom to be ready. That way I don't have to rush to get it packed and up there tomorrow.

Gary made chicken porkolt for supper. That's a Hungarian dish with chicken, onions, and tomatoes and a load of paprika, served with noodles or gnocchi. We had the gnocchi, which I really like. So that made up for the long day kind of, but now I need to sleep. Meeting all the way up in Rockton tomorrow morning.

Oh, and it's 45F outside headed down to a possible 32F before the night is over. It's too early for frost, but not far north of here they've already got a hard freeze alert. And our hay guy called to say he has two loads for us. So we'll be unloading hay soon and I'll be griping about the cost no doubt.

Comments

[moonhare]

My second shift, cleaning, starts when the building closes. I've put off showing up until fifteen minutes past closing just to be assured that the patrons, and employees, have gone home.

We have two book groups that meet here. The first group, the Book Club, reads popular material, recent bestsellers and the like. The second, the Literary Club (I call them The Snoots), reads only obscure non-fiction, the more obscure the better. Days before either meet you'll find members asking for required book and then shrugging off that it is not available. I wonder if anyone reads the chosen book other than the member who recommended it.

Our first frost is fairly close to the first day of Autumn, though last year we had moderate temps until mid October. Forties tonight, they say.

[altivo]

Our book club is all women, and they seem mostly to read what is now called "chick lit." Every once in a while they nominate something outside that genre and invariably it gets this reception. They find it "boring" or "too hard" and no one finishes it. I've tried to steer them onto somewhat more challenging material, authors like Ursula Le Guin and A. S. Byatt, but most seem to find such materials "unreadable." They accepted the suggestion of Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian and kept her on their "to be read" list for a year but never got around to it and finally dropped the book.

[avon_deer]

The Blood Service have always been very calm and quiet whenever *I* see them. But then I have never seen them in a library.

[altivo]

Hospital workers generally do give a calm and quiet air, for lots of good reasons. These people are workers for local blood bank and some of them are volunteers I think. It's quite a different culture.

[(Anonymous)]

"Connecticut Yankee" is one of my favorite books. I'd recommend to anyone who wants a taste of Twain (or satire in general). What didn't they like about it? That reaction seems pretty bizarre.

-Reiter, for whom the login refuses to work

[altivo]

I can't really explain why they didn't like it. None of them could really give me a coherent explanation. One said the author "repeats himself too much" and another that he "spends too much time describing scenes and people" and another that "he was too preachy."

I suspect they just aren't prepared for 19th century, non-Jamesian writing.