All posts by Adam

About Adam

Adam is a Digital Creation Specialist - Children who never has enough shelf space for his board game collection, wall space for his photographs, or stomach space for his baking. Once he’s got a book in his clutches (preferably a fantasy, or humorous non-fiction one) absolutely nothing else is getting done that day. Working in a library is a blessing and a curse to his free time.  |  Meet the team

HOTS Farewell to 2022: A Year in Review

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It’s time to ring in a new year1 and say goodbye to the old! As I have the honour2 of writing the final Hot Off the Shelf post of 2022, I thought it’d be nice to have all the HOTS writers share their top three reads for the year. Or, to be more accurate: their top two reads for the year and then an open category for the 3rd, so long as it’s available at VPL. One of us chose a book, two chose albums, and one chose a game3. We also have a special Editor’s Choice category from our lead, Heather.

To make this more interesting than a simple list of items4 I followed up my colleagues’ choices with some questions, the answers to which you’ll find below. Like an answer, but want some follow-up? Ask in the comments! We’re all going to be monitoring this.

Along with each writer’s choices and answers to the questions, you’ll be getting my first thoughts on seeing/researching each title to help inform where my questions came from5.

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The World Through a Lens: a Photographic Perspective

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The cover of Wild and Crazy

My bio hints at it, but I’ll state this fact plainly: I am a photographer. Not*1 in an “I take pictures” way, but in the “I have a Bachelor of Fine Arts in photography” way. Yup. I was a weirdo arts school kid before being a*2 library school student. I’m also completely over the art world, primarily because of my bachelor’s. All you “I take pictures” photographers? Keep at it! It’s not a degree that makes you a photographer; it’s taking pictures. At least in my eyes.

So why did going to school for art turn me against the art world? I like taking pretty photographs*3 and trying to ascribe some higher meaning to them just to please critics gives me a headache. I’m an uncomplicated photographer; what you see in the picture is what you choose to see. I just saw something neat and framed it in a way that pleased me.

Not all photographers work like I do, though. Some have missions to complete, subjects they excel in capturing, a desire to push the medium forward, or a cause to champion. They shoot for magazines, competitions, journalism, or any myriad of reasons. Sometimes those photos are collected in massive books. We’ve all been in a bookstore and seen coffee table books, behemoths full of imagery to peruse while taking a break with a nice hot drink. Lovely to look through, but with homes getting smaller, who has space for them these days? This is where the library comes in*4, borrow the book, look through it for a time, and return it when you’re done, knowing it’ll be there again if you want it.

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Modern Myths

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Modern Myths

The cover of The Penelopiad, by Margaret Atwood

I have always been fascinated by mythology and, to a lesser extent, the religions surrounding it. Or that created the myths in the first place. Having been raised religious only to eschew that way of life as I get older, as many people in my generation have, I still remember the stories that are part of the mythos of Catholicism*1: God creating the world in seven days*2, Noah’s ark, David and Goliath, The Book of Revelation, and others. These are shared archetypical stories transcending cultures, even if details differ. The Creation Myth*3, The Ark*4, Divine Intervention*5, and The End of the World as We Know It*6 link with the stories mentioned. With these tales being archetypical, it’s only natural that they get repackaged and repurposed as time passes. Sometimes they’re brought into modern times but maintain the same message or ideas. Other times authors take them in a different direction or focus on characters that were sidelined in the original tale, which is particularly common with female characters. These rewrites can be serious, satirical, feminist, drive home An Aesop*7, or just stories that use mythology as a jumping-off point for something otherwise original.

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