I owe Erik Stattin an apology—he is a Swedish librarian keeping a blog, and here was I complaining a few days ago about there not being any. Although what I was inquiring after was more of a library news site, still it’s a very good blog. . . you can tell his profession by reading it ‘cos it’s so well maintained

I don’t mind Blogger’s habit of randomly stripping IMG tags and Javascript tags of their contents when I post. Not at all. No, not even a little bit. I’m happy to re-insert the code for my visitor counter and the Blogger button every so often.

Grrr.

We bought a charming little book about Swedish popular beliefs and superstitions the other day, from the Fyris River boquinistes. It contains all kinds of odd beliefs about what happens if you do thus and so; if you neglect to clean your house in the morning, for instance, it means you will get visitors during the day. Right. . . so we have visitors every day, then; they probably turn up when we’re at work. Also, if the cat washes itself with one hind leg pointing straight out (as they do) it also means visitors, who will arrive from the direction the leg is pointing in. So now I wonder: What if the cat is washing itself, with the leg pointing south, and then falls over so the leg points east and the fully extracted tongue points straight up? Stina suggested it could mean that we’ll be attacked from every direction at once the next time we role play at our place. . .

The first time I read Lord of the Rings, I had just turned 10, and it was the Easter holiday. I read it in Swedish, of course; my sister Ulrika’s much-loved, much-read paperbacks which had fallen apart into many small books of 1-30 pages apiece. I remember how I lay on my back on the floor of Ulrika’s room with its green carpet, with the unread part of the book on my left and the read parts on my right; I’d lift the pages from my left and place them carefully on my right when I’d read them. I remember how the sun warmed me as I lay there reading—I wonder where Ulrika was, I suspect she wasn’t at home that Easter—and I finished the trilogy in that week and somehow life wasn’t really the same afterwards.

Why did I suddenly remember this? Two reasons: first, Nicklas wrote to Good Books about reading At Swim-Two-Birds (I may have to move him from Innocent Bystanders to Fellow MCers soon) ; secondly, I bought a second-hand copy of Stephen King’s It last Saturday. Both of these books come with strong memories of the first time I read them; that is for a later entry however, now I fear I must get myself into work. Unfortunately, this means dislodging the black cat from my lap where she is being very comfortable. Life is a trial.

Var är bibliotekarierna? Jag har sökt efter en svensk webblog med bibliotekstema, eller skriven av en bibliotekarie, men de finns inte! Danska och norska biblioteksbloggar finns, men inga svenskspråkiga och så vitt jag har lyckats hitta inga engelskspråkiga skrivna av svenskar, heller. Det är en brist.

Här är några länkar för att visa vad jag menar: de norska Blogg og Bibliotek och Bibliotekarens bibliotek, och den danska Biblog. Visst fyller de en funktion!

Néablog är inte en biblioteksblogg, och jag vill inte att den ska vara det heller. Och jag vill skriva på engelska eftersom de flesta av mina läsare—bland dem som läser regelbundet åtminstone—inte förstår svenska. Så jag kommer inte att bli den som för biblioteks-Sverige ur bloggmörkret, men någon borde göra det.

We live by the seaside! Three consecutive nights of very hard rain has soaked the ground to the point where it refuses to take up more water, and so there is water all along the eastern side of the house, and out in the street beyond; the bus drove through a minor lake this morning.

And the cats come in with wet bellies. Fur brained critters! They are not supposed to enjoy frolicking in the damp!

I got a flash of insight about just why Kim S Robinson’s worlds seem so utopian to me: it’s not just that the people discuss things eternally—for after all that happens in the real world also—but that they listen to each other, and are willing to (sometimes) compromise. And they disagree without vilifying the other side.

The good people, that is, the science/intellectual type people who are at the centre of his books. And also the good kind of politicians. I think that’s what makes me uplifted by the societies he envisions.

Hooray, the capacious hold-all is back!

Ooo… I really don’t know how I feel about this. No, that’s not true—the idea is great (though I haven’t managed to understand just how it’s supposed to work) but I don’t know if I’d want to join or not. On the one hand, I love books with a passion, I like being surrounded by them, and I like books with a history. . . on the other hand this means that I’m not fond of parting with them. . . but then again, I have been known to give books away, in fact I am very fond of doing so. So I don’t know. And getting free books is of course something I could live with. But on the fifth hand it doesn’t seem as if most of the circulating books are ones I’d be particularly interested in receiving, to be honest.

Perhaps if I found out how it works, first, I’d know just what to think.

Jonas gave me all his money^* today. Thankyou, Jonte! Details of my postal giro account are available upon request to anybody who wants to follow his lead.

^*except for what he needed for his own use.