Sarah the Librarian

Awhile ago, I wrote about how I would break up with cable if it weren't for sports. Well, my husband and I decided that we could live without live sports available in our living room, only to stumble across an interesting partial solution: ESPN on XBox Live . Thanks to this, whenever the Cubs are on ESPN we can watch the game live. Of course considering the Cubs season this is probably going to be a less common occurrence. And while I'm on the subject of saying goodbye to cable, this article sums up some of the non-cable options for watching TV and movies available online.

Talking about dystopian novels last time, this week I'm back with more, this time with teenage protagonists. It's interesting how the adult novels tend to focus on the society at large and then you start to identify with the main character. These novels for teens start with the hero's story and then progress to illuminate how their story affects the larger world. Also because I happened to find so many, I'm sticking with only series. The Giver Trilogy by Lois Lowry - a loose trilogy following three teens through a world where each community limits the lives of their people in different ways. The Giver (1993) - 12-year-old Jonas is assigned the occupation of "Receiver of Memory". It is his job to take on the memories of their community before it was wiped clean of the strong emotions of love and hate and things like colors. As he begins to learn more about the way life used to be, he finds it harder to stay in the community. My seventh grade English teacher ...

... Live Sporting Events Thanks to Hulu, Netflix, and a handful of other websites I'm able to find the majority of TV shows I care about streaming online mostly for free, or a few for a small monthly fee. My husband and I even gave up cable for awhile and got along great, except we kept finding excuses to go to a local bar to watch baseball and football games. For as much as we spent on beer, we might as well have kept our cable subscription. Now I know there are torrenty ways to download anything I could ever want to watch for free, but I'm at the age where that kind of hackery doesn't hold the same thrill it used to. I just want to watch my shows quickly, easily, and reliably and if I have to pay a small fee to do so, it's not the end of the world. I also think that media providers who don't realize that they could grow their audience (and make more money) if they played nicely with providers like Hulu and Netflix *cough* CBS *cough* CW *cough* premium cable *...

A few years ago I stumbled across the website Reading Trails . I got really excited because it plays to what I think is one of my strengths as a readers advisor. I may not have read everything out there, but I'm really good at talking to other readers, reading reviews and just generally keeping track of what's out there to read and why people are reading it. I liked Reading Trails because I could group together titles on similar topics, settings, etc. whether or not I'd read them, and I had a lot of fun doing it. Unfortunately Reading Trails is looking pretty broken, so I think I'm going to bring my own Reading Paths to this blog on Mondays. For some reason I keep finding my way to dystopian novels. They satisfy my need for thought-provoking fiction with a touch of sci-fi. Here are a few classic dystopian novels I've read, along with one I haven't, but might as well have for as much as I've heard about it. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury - A classic of hi...

While going through an old blog of mine, I found this summary of a presentation I gave in late 2006 on finding reliable health information online. Surprisingly most of it is at least somewhat relevant today. Since I'm trying to relive the days when I used to research medical information for a living, this wasn't a bad way to jog my memory. Finding Reliable Health Information Online MedlinePlus:  This site is put together by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) as a comprehensive consumer health resource. It is relatively easy to use and requires little or no knowledge of medical terminology. Use it like a search engine and simply type your term into the search box, or explore one of MedlinePlus’ specific resources, including drug information, dictionary, and medical encyclopedia. http://medlineplus.gov Quackwatch:  A great site for checking out “too good to be true” medical claims. This non-profit corporation is dedicated to combating “health-related frauds, myths, fads, ...

I know this is old news, but I was flabbergasted by yet another attempt to limit the availability of information. The Tennessee legislature has introduced a bill to ban discussions of homosexuality in elementary and middle schools . The claim is that talk of homosexuality is not age-appropriate. Of course lengthy discussion of sex acts either homosexual or heterosexual is not age-appropriate for elementary school students. But banning the words "gay," "lesbian," and "homosexual" from classrooms also means that we can't explain why some kids have two moms, two dads, or a mom and a dad, which is an age appropriate discussion of sexuality. This is just another one of those news events that confirms my belief that freedom of information is essential for free societies like ours. No matter what my beliefs on homosexuality or any other hot button issue are, the way to support and defend those beliefs is not doing everything I can to hide all information to...

Ever since my friends got together for our very long delayed Christmas celebration I've been powering through Karen Marie Moning's Fever series. Basically our hot young heroine goes to Dublin to discover who killed her sister, only she finds out that fairies are real and on the verge of destroying our world. Definitely better than your average paranormal romance/urban fantasy. I generally don't read the genre because it's either too sleazy or too twilight-y. In this one the heroine is believable despite the fact that she's a 22-year-old blonde who's lived a charmed life right up until her sister's murder. She ends being surprisingly gritty and resilient and while there does end up being a lot of sex, it's not what you think. Definitely on the dark side, but worth the read. Right now I'm on #4 of a the 5 book series. Hopefully I'll finish it all this weekend because it's been impossible to focus on much other than reading these books. I had ...