‘Club Dead’ By Charlaine Harris

Club Dead is the third book of Sookie Stackhouse’s vampire adventures. The book begins with Bill acting strangely distant then disappearing. Eric asks Sookie to travel to Jackson, Mississippi and use her abilities to figure out what might have happened. This trip involves more encounters with werewolves and vampires as well as more description of the vampire power structure that has been alluded to in previous books.

As I get further along in the Sookie Stackhouse series I keep finding reasons to dislike Bill. Given that, one of the best things about this book is the fact that Bill has a very small role and several other (better) male characters are developed. Although Sookie leaves much to be desired from a feminist perspective, her independence and determination are a welcome departure from other popular vampire stories (Twilight, anyone?). Rather than being totally dependent on the men who are romantically interested in her, Sookie looks out for herself and isn’t afraid to be without male companionship. Though we could certainly do better as far as female role models are concerned, we could also be doing much, much worse.

Job Search Web Sites

It seems as if there are about a million of them, but in fact there are only about a thousand. There's a lot of overlap among them, but you should probably not stop with just one. Here are some national and local job-search sites that appear legitimate and useful (e.g., not too many Work at Home scam ads).

Job Search Resources

Career Builder Job postings from across the country. Search by location or job category. Upload your resume.

Careerjet Search for jobs by industry or location.

Careers in Government Search for jobs in government and the public sector.

Craigslist Local classifieds, sorted by category and date posted.

Indeed Jobs from thousands of company websites and job boards.

Job Bank USA Permanent, contract, temporary, summer, and internship positions.

Jobcentral.com Includes searching by occupation, state, industry, military, and international.

Job.com Post your resume, search job listings, or use the career tools.

Job Dig Delivers weekly job opportunities to help jobseekers connect with local employers.

Jobfox.com Uses an in-depth question and answer format to learn about your experience, wants and needs and then rates jobs according to your qualifications and needs.

Job-hunt.org Jobs in local business, education, healthcare, banking, and government. Lots of useful local links not available elsewhere.

Jobs Listed by Career Field/Industry About.com’s job listings, job opportunities, and career and employment resources by type of job.

Linkup.com Offers searching of company websites by job title, keyword, city, or zip code.

Monster.com Search for up to 50 job categories in up to 50 metro areas at a time. Post your resume.

The NationJob Network Postings come directly from potential employers.

Net-Temps.com Mostly temporary jobs, but also some permanent ones.

Ohio Means Jobs Links to Indeed and Monster.com and offers some information particularly useful to Ohioans.

Simply Hired Jobs from job boards, company pages, online classifieds and other data sources.

USA Jobs The Government's official site for jobs and employment information.

Yahoo! Hot Jobs Search for jobs by keyword, locale, or category.

National Atlas of Korea

For reasons that seem mysterious, each Southwestern library has received two beautiful free copies of the National Atlas of Korea, published in 2009 by the government of South Korea. It’s hardcover, about 12” by 14,” 192 pages, and printed in vibrant color. While the borders between North Korea, China, and Russia are delineated with thick red lines, you have to look very closely to see the faint dashes indicating the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea.

About a third of the book’s information pertains both to North and South Korea: you can find basic maps and topographical and geographical information about both countries. You can find more in-depth information about South Korea, including gravel content in deep soil, groundwater usage, endangered amphibians, population distribution, housing construction, national monuments—you get the idea—about South Korea only, with the outline of North Korea included in the map but left white.

The books cost, as far as I can tell, the equivalent of $16 to send via seamail from Korea to the library. They were postmarked July 20 and received at Southwestern on August 31. We will keep them in the reference collection, where I am sure they will prove valuable to people doing country reports on either Korea. I plan to write a thank you letter to GeoDream, the company that sent us the books, and will report here if they respond.

‘Farewell Summer’ by Ray Bradbury

I think I may be getting too old to think about my mortality. Is this a contradiction? Maybe. What I really mean is that I’m getting to the point where aging and death is no longer interesting – just scary and depressing. Nevertheless, Ray Bradbury’s war of youth versus age is fun to read. Farewell Summer is the long anticipated follow-up to his classic Dandelion Wine. The story continues to follow Douglas and his younger brother as they interact with the elders in their town.

At some point I started getting the feeling that the aim of this book was to provide as many quotable phrases about life, age and death as could possibly be contained in 200 pages. There’s nothing wrong with this – there is definitely something to be said for being able to succinctly summarize important concepts in ways that are clever enough to be memorable. One such memorable quote:
“Life gives us everything then takes it away – youth, love, happiness, friends”
Unfortunately, I’m sure this is exactly right.

‘Sex and the Single Girl’ By Helen Gurley Brown

I want to be kind of charitable towards Brown because she wrote this book so long ago and some of the ideas and tips that she included were progressive for her time. Things that Brown has going for her:

• She gives good nutrition advice


• She encourages women to be fit and healthy


• She believes that women should have enjoyable, fulfilling careers


• She believes that women should have and enjoy sex

Unfortunately, Brown mentions all of these things relative to their importance in meeting men. In fact, even though Brown says that men aren’t necessary to the happiness of the single woman, she starts the book by giving pointers (in the form of several chapters) on assessing potential mates/husbands.

Should women be healthy and eat nutritious foods? Yes, it will help them to be more attractive to men! Should women have careers? Yes, especially if their line of work allows them to meet lots of available men (maybe you should find a new job if you aren’t meeting men). Should women participate in mutually enjoyable sexual relationships? Absolutely, but hopefully the man will buy you lots of nice things.

Do I sound bitter? If so, it’s probably because I’m not following Brown’s advice.

'Jane Eyre' by Charlotte Bronte

Does anyone really need to read a review of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre? I think most of us had read this book by about the 10th grade, and we believe that we’ve benefited as much as we’re going to from the book. Fortunately, this couldn’t possibly be the case. I use the word fortunately for a couple reasons: if you haven’t read the book since high school you couldn’t possibly remember or appreciate all of the book’s intricacies; if you have read the book since high school you obviously enjoyed it enough to read it multiple times. Both situations are opportunities for enjoyment; in one instance you’ll be able to read and better understand one of literature’s greatest masterpieces, in the other you’ll revisit a book that has already proven to be a pleasure.

For those of you who don’t know, Jane Eyre is one of the greatest romance novels of all time. To this day, it remains one of the few well written romances involving unattractive, seemingly oddly matched individuals (regular people falling in love? gasp!). Lucky for us (and all of British literature), Bronte’s novel isn’t only about Jane and Mr. Rochester’s love; it is the suspenseful and interesting story of Jane Eyre’s life. Though these fictitious events were taking place nearly two hundred years ago, Jane is strong, thoughtful and intelligent in ways that modern women should appreciate. And perhaps more importantly, she respects herself in ways that many modern women should learn to emulate.

'Imperfect Birds' by Anne Lamott

I picked this book to read because I have liked some of Anne Lamott’s non-fiction work in the past; her book Operating Instructions about her son’s first year was lovely. This book is fiction and tells the story of a tense mother-daughter relationship. Elizabeth, the mother, is a recovering alcoholic; Rosie, the daughter, is 17 and rebellious. They live in California with Elizabeth’s second husband, James. The book follows the family as Rosie becomes more lost in a mess of teenage drugs and lies.

I'm of the opinion that you don't really need to go out searching for profound experience in order to properly appreciate the universe, but Lamott's characters seem to constantly want to hammer it into my head. They spend so much time reflecting on amazing, intellectual things that their revelations completely fail to impress or amaze me intellectually.

The point of a good book isn’t really about liking the characters in the story; people who are not especially likeable can be engaging and interesting. That being said, I didn’t really have any sympathy for the characters. I thought that Elizabeth was wimpy and pathetic and Rosie was hateful and self-centered. Have I just described the dynamic of every parent-child relationship? Possibly. Maybe that’s the point of the book; everyone in the world is awful beyond description. But I was still frustrated and irritated with these people. It’s a given that the daughter is making bad decisions, but the mother makes some of the dumbest choices imaginable too. I guess I’ll have to wait until my daughter is 17 before I pass judgment.