links for 2010-02-15

• NYC Subway Security System Way Over Budget and Past Due | Security Management
  (tags: subway security)
• Can You Give Away 100 Bucks on a NYC Subway? – Tonic
  (tags: subway)
• News – Mom of Precious Star Gabourey Sidibe Sings in NYC Subway – Movies, TV & Music – UsMagazine.com
  (tags: subway singing)

Spotted on the Subway 02/13/10

The Six Wives of Henry VIII by Alison Weir

I’d just come back from a nice holiday up in Massachusetts when I spotted a woman reading this on the N train.  She was one of the few people reading on the subway and I could tell she was really enjoying this book.  When the train was approaching her stop, she put the bookmark in her page and had to pause a moment to collect her thoughts (and her breath).

Librarian friends in the blogosphere.

A big congratulations to my friend Emily for getting so much love and linkage from Marilyn Johnson, author of This Book is Overdue!: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All.   Personally, I, like all librarians, look forward to reading the book (no, I haven’t read it yet) and then giving it to all of my non-librarian friends.

Cheers!

Judging Books by the cover.

**Note: All links go to OCLC WorldCat Catalog entries so that you can locate a copy at your nearest library.

Movie tie-in version of The Road by Cormac McCarthy.

Seen reading on the subway 02/09/2010:

One thing that strikes me is that this book cover is much less interesting than the original and the “Oprah Book Club” version (at least to me).   The stark tone of the prose was perfectly reflected by the original story.   While I haven’t yet seen the film, I’ve read enough reviews to know that there are more explanations that serve to remove some of the uncertainty about what has happened in the world to result in the apocalyptic setting presented in the text.   In a way, that is unfortunate as I thought that that uncertainty was a key device which made the story far more intense and frightening.

So, what did you do at the Guggenheim?…

 
THIS + ART = GOOD TIMES!!!

Imagine going to the Guggenheim and being able to do this on a spiral trampoline!

[via] Gizmodo.

Burrowing into Queens (to get to Manhattan)

WNYC’s Matthew Schuerman produced a wonderful report, broadcast today, on the East Side Access Project to create a more direct route for some LIRR customers to get into and out of Manhattan via Long Island City. 

I, along with thousands of other Astoria commuters, have a unique view into part of the project by way of the elevated ‘N’ line as it passes over the massive hole in the ground that the construction crew has burrowed for the past two years. The project is supposed to be complete by 2015.  In the report, Shuerman asked the project manager, Andy Thompson, for a rough estimate of how many feet per day they manage to tunnel.  Thompson’s response is telling, “It’s more like days per feet.”

[Link] WNYC – An Audio Postcard from Beneath the East Side