What I will not be ordering from this month's Previews

[shewhomust]

One of these days I will make a serious effort to read some manga; I can see there's a whole world of comics there, and I'm missing the fun. Somehow, though, I don't think I will be starting with Project X Cup Noodle: "Billions eat it - now you can read it!" (which reminds me of a Ferdinand Feghoot story - but I digress). Here's the pitch:

In a time when the Japanese food industry was struggling economically, a man named Momofuku Andou sought to turn the tide. Seeking a new type of food for a new era, he ordered the development of a "Cup Noodle" - a revolutionary idea for a convenient instant noodle. Overcoming public skepticism as well as doubts even from those within their own company, Andou and his staff of young developers constantly challenged convention to create this new product. Behind the now proverbial cup o' noodle, which has sold over 8.2 billion worldwide, lies a dramatic story of the struggles of the men behind its success.

I'm more tempted by the Rex Libris statue "featuring the librarian stomping on the hand of a demon who had one too many overdue books."

Comments

[cellio]

Demons with too many overdue library books deserve a good stomping.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

I have too many overdue library books. Happily, the library in question is the Lit & Phil - sorry, the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle upon Tyne - where they really don't trouble you at all. Stomping is not an issue. Nor are fines. Every few months, they might send a gentle reminder; if they happen to spot you in the building, they might remember to ask if you'd like them all renewed. This place is just so civilised, it's like another world...

Actually, I think it is another world. I have a whole sequence of stories to write, kind of in the tradition of SF bar stories - Spider Robinson's Callaghan stories et al, it's a whole sub-genre - only with a library standing in for the bar. I even have titles. Or maybe I should edit an anthology...?

[cellio]

Do they ping you if someone else requests the book you have checked out? On reflection, I have no problem with holding library books long-term if other patrons can (1) learn that the book is part of the holdings and (2) get you to bring it back so they can share too. It's silly to rush to return a book after two weeks if it'll be five years before anyone else wants it, but it's also frustrating to be the person who really wants to use that book when it's been checked out for a year. So I guess it's mainly an issue of communiation and sharing for me -- you'd certainly return it if you were done and you knew someone else was waiting, so it falls to the library to facilitate that.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

You're absolutely right, of course - and while it's not exactly a ping, more a postcard (they are blundering into the 21st century, bless them, but they've got the whole 20th to negotiate first), they do indeed send you a 'please return this, because someone else wants it now'. And chase it up if you neglect. They are the perfect library. But my experience is very much at the nobody-else-has-ever-wanted-this end of things. When they buy a book for the permanent collection, that means permanent. As witness, I was studying Esperanto a few years back (for a book that hasn't happened yet), and I needed an English-Esperanto dictionary, and before buying one I thought I'd check the Lit & Phil's collection. And of course they have one; they have the original, the first, as compiled by the man who invented the language; and so I borrowed it. And when they stamped it out, we discovered that I was the first person who had ever borrowed it. Published in (by memory) 1907, and nobody had ever used it until me, in 2004, but it was still there on the shelf. God, I love that place...