Chinese Letter by Svetislav Basara; textbook rant

I finished Chinese Letter by Svetislav Basara. Wha-huh. I'm not sure there's an actual plot and nothing really happens. Definitely not for everyone. Guy rambles on and on about existence and fearing death but wanting to kill himself. He has been ordered (probably by imaginary people) to write a statement of about 100 pages and he writes down whatever occurs to him. There's conversations with his mother, his sister's marital woes, the neighbor girl's shenanigans, his visits to his pathologist friend, and lots of introspection. The main character is obviously insane and this is the reason for his crisis. His very existence causes him pain but he cannot bring himself to end it. It's a little funny, a little obnoxious, and a little unnerving. I didn't not like the book. That's really all I can say for it.

Now for a small rant on textbooks. Textbook publishers are parasitic asshats who make a living feeding on the earnings of a captive audience. They are part of what's making it so hard for anyone not supported by well-off parents to get a higher education. They deserve to be pressed with their own product. Preferably an introductory medical-surgical nursing book; those things are huge.

I have 4 editions of Karch's introductory pharmacology text and I decided to look through the first chapter to see if the older editions would still be useful for the students and I made a (not so) shocking discovery. They are all the same. Oh, they changed the font and re-designed the diagrams and charts but the information is practically word-for-word. A few paragraphs were given a couple extra words or a new sentence but not in such a way as to add content. I then looked through Jarvis' physical examination pocket companion for 1997 and 2008. Again, identical. All of the paragraphs were identical except for maybe a few words every couple of chapters. Nothing that added content. If the nursing diagnoses (listed in a little box at the end of each chapter) hadn't changed in the intervening years there would be no need for a new book at all.

New editions every year or two also means that students can't easily go out and buy a used copy of the text assigned which is what I did as an undergraduate. (Of course I studied art history. Less new information really.) If the class the year before used edition 8 and this year they are assigned edition 9 there goes your opportunity to buy something cheaper.

Now, I understand the need for new texts, especially in fields where information is regularly updated, but the changes being made do not justify the amount by which they raise prices. These texts cost $100 - $150. How are poorer students supposed to afford this? When a student comes in looking for a book to study from I just give them an older (by maybe a year or two) edition with a warning. They don't care; many of them are working with families to care for and they're just glad to have something to help them in their studies. I don't care because I know all the relevant information they need to pass their class is there.

I'm going to do a comparison of some of the other texts. I have some that date back to the '80s. (No, they are not on the shelf for the students.) I'll look at them next to the newer editions, from the past 5 years, to see what's changed.

City of Tiny Lights by Patrick Neate; Hidden Camera by Zoran Zivkovic

A Ugandan-Indian Englishman private eye investigating a case for a hooker. It's a decent enough book. Tommy Akhtar does nothing but drink, smoke, and ruminate about his past and the way of post-colonial Britain and in between that he looks into the case he was hired to solve. Then he gets involved in a case he wasn't hired to solve. That sort of thing happens a lot in these sort of books, along with the obligatory run-in with stereotypical obnoxious and stupid authority, and I have to wonder how these PIs finance their escapades. The plot is almost buried in reminiscences about Tommy's life and "how the world works" tangents and the British slang and cricket references leave me in the dark more often than not but it's not bad over all. There's more of a problem with the staccato nature of the prose and the "serious" tacked on to every fifth sentence. Also, for a book with a message running through it about how even "Paki's" (as he puts it) can be real people and something other than their stereotype and which makes fun of those people who judge others based on ethnicity/nationality, the fat-necked/overly tanned/macho "Yank" with bad fashion sense and an inability to "get" English humor comes over as hilarious. And kind of jarring actually.

Tommy has sent some dumb "thug-lite" kid with a chip on his shoulder to go undercover in an organization that brainwashes just that sort of idiot. I'm sure this will end well. Tommy is an interesting character but after he solves the case he was initially paid for he really does very little.

It's a good read, but I wonder how many of my recommendations would still be nice if I was buying books rather than getting them at the library.

This next book I did buy but cheap. Amazon Marketplace is my go-to for all books not in the library. That's where I got Hidden Camera by Zoran Zivkovic. A Czech author, this book is about a middle-aged undertaker who finds himself being led a merry chase in what he believes is a hidden camera show. He gets an invitation to a film, only when he arrives there is only one other person in the audience, a woman who's face stays hidden, and the film shows him eating his lunch. In the dark after the show ends he receives another invitation, this time to a bookstore. He decides to outwit his unseen antagonists by not being freaked out or making a fool of himself for their show. He fails if only because he's trying too hard and he's so caught up with being well-mannered that he's too rigid to easily adapt to new situations. The unnamed protagonist ends up moving from one strange situation to the next in the hopes of getting the better of the plot's organizers and of seeing the face of the mysterious woman. The ending was odd. I think I need to consider it a bit more because the whole thing seems to have something to do with life before birth/after death and nothing is ever explained. There's no dialogue either, basically. Only a short conversation with an obstetrician and a few lines exchanged with the extras in the "show".

It's damp out

Work, work. Walls are coming down, carpet being laid, walls painted. That chemical mix of paint, drywall, and adhesives that doesn't actually smell good but does because it is associated with newness. The admin offices across the street are done but no one can move in because the internet hasn't been hooked up yet. Staff are floating, sharing space. Everybody is busy, harried, and tired. I try to stay out of the way and work on my cataloging list. There are a lot of donated books for the start of the library. Hopefully that means more money for more specialized books and for other subjects. A well-rounded (and accredited) library has more than just one subject.

The only thing I'm a little concerned about now is hours. They want the library to be open at all times they have classes. They have classes seven days a week, from about 8am - 9pm. Yeah, I can't work that often. A student could get a break on finances if they help out in the library but if that doesn't happen right away the hours are going to have to be shorter. Besides, school libraries aren't open that often. No library is open like that. Most close on Sunday, open a few hours Saturday, and close early Friday. I don't get paid to work lawyer hours.

I can't wait to actually move into the library. I'll have a space to put the resources I have already to organize them. I would like to get the students access to AJN and Nursing2011 if possible. I still have no idea how much money they are willing to spend on this. Database subscriptions are expensive but I don't know which ones they can afford. Cochrane Library? Something from Gale or EBSCO? Uptodate? That last one comes recommended but the cost can be about $25 per student. I don't know if the students really need something so sophisticated for their reports.

I feel like I'll be able to concentrate better when I have a permanent space with my own computer. Somewhere I can order books into piles to keep track rather than storing them in someone else's office. Maybe it won't feel so much like people are watching me. I know they don't quite understand what I'm doing. One of the women referred to my cataloging efforts as "your little project." You can't just slap a random number on the spine and stick them on the shelf.

I finished The Widow Killer by Pavel Kohout. The first part of the book was pretty good but the second half lost focus and became something else entirely. The killer lost focus as well, switching from murdering "whores" (his definition of "whores" was basically the same as "women") to murdering Germans. The uprising of the Czechs at the end of the war provides a backdrop of chaos that the German, Buback and the Czech, Morava have to contend with. Only they spend a lot of time dealing separately with the revolution and almost none looking for the killer. Buback turns out to be an entirely worthless character, good only for repenting of what Germany did to Europe. His character is almost purposeless to the plot. He questions his nationality (he's half-Czech) and eventually goes on and on about how horrible the Germans have been. You could have cut him out and assigned the few investigative parts he played to Morava and still have a solid story. That is if the author hadn't interrupted his own plot. If Kohuot had wanted to write about the chaos at the end of the war then that's what he should have done. A tense, dramatic story could have come out of that. The search for the eponymous Widow Killer would have led to a good story by itself if it wasn't derailed by the main characters losing focus halfway through. There were two good story ideas but instead they got mashed together into an uncomfortable mix.

Tropic of Cancer is still interesting. The writing style is meandering and loopy but I like that. The main character is disagreeable and very immature but he's stopped going on and on about "cunts" and started talking about more interesting things. Losing his job, mooching off the friends he cultivates for the express purpose of a free ride, exploring the city, going out to eat. It's weird. I don't often come across a book I can appreciate even when I think the main character is utterly obnoxious. He reminds me of something the Nostalgia Critic said about Bella Swan in his Bum review of Twilight. "I think I'm tortured but I'm just pretentious." That's Henry. Oh, and for those who are curious because this book is known for it's explicit sex scenes? (I certainly was.) There really aren't any. There is talk about sex in an almost self-conscious 'I'm breaking the rules kind of way' but no real "scenes". When he does talk about it his descriptions are mechanical, focused on just hammering it home and it gives the impression that he must have been a crap lover. When he talks about what a woman wants there is only mention of her desire for 'that package of love shuttling between her thighs.' I'm paraphrasing a bit but that euphemism is his. At least he hasn't used the word wand, I suppose.

Organized chaos

First day at my new job. They're getting ready to move the admin offices to a building across the street and everyone is getting ready to be uprooted from their old places. The guy doing IT was in trying to make sense of a system he hadn't been in charge of for a year. Details of my job trickled in to me in bits and pieces as I sat at a borrowed desk and worked to create a budget and set up the ILS. There was a window next to my chair and through it I could see children playing on the blacktop in a makeshift play area. There must be a day-care nearby. There was one little girl wearing a floofy pink tulle skirt, like something from a costume.

Everyone was very friendly and very busy. The director is energetic, gregarious, does things fast. Quick at all things it seems. She's determined to move as fast as possible on this project and I hope I'll be able to keep up. I'm rather the opposite but I think I'll have to be less systematic and slow than I normally am.

I have a parking tag now so maybe I'll be able to park closer. Not that the walk to the shopping center was unpleasant. There are a number of affordable lunch choices close by, much more so than at my last job. There's a barbecue place next door and an Italian-Australian deli across the street, then Chinese, sandwiches, and noodles nearby.

I've been reading Kahout's The Widow Killer. Takes place in the Czech Republic right at the end of WWII. A Czech detective must work with a member of the gestapo to find a serial killer. Buback, the German, has been charged with inserting himself among the local police to discover any resistance as the Reich starts to disintegrate in a last ditch effort to keep control. The front is getting closer and Buback is starting to question his loyalties. Morava, the Czech officer, has to watch his back as things start to come undone and he worries about doing his job and protecting his mother and lover as the front sweeps towards them.

It's, again, an interesting look at another segment of this major world event and how different people might have viewed it depending on their circumstances. The mystery in and of itself isn't much. A man is killing widows because, basically, he's a crazy momma's boy. Who has far too much luck. I mean seriously over the top amounts of luck. The relationship between Morava and Jitka is a little too gauzy-romantic based-on-true-hearts-as-one for my taste. They're good people and they love each other and that's it. The affair between Buback and Grete at least shows progression and trying to fit together although it's still a little unrealistic. It might just be me. I have little patience for relationships that don't show real development or that try to be things they're not. Anyway, lack of human qualities makes me not care when one of them dies (due to setting up one of the stupidest plans to catch a killer in police history). So, the story and mystery is so-so but the atmosphere and the plights of most of the characters are interesting.