After a month of feeling my around the DEP (Department of Environmental Protection), I sent out a letter to let people know I was there. I was nervous that I would get either of 2 contradictory results. No one would care or I would be deluged with indecipherable scientific questions.
Thankfully, neither happened. Most of the responses were people who hadn't a clue about the library's existence. A few reference requests were thrown in the batch. Surprisingly, they haven't been that hard. I just have to remember that I don't necessarily need to possess a phD in science in order to conduct searches. I just have to know how to construct an effective search.
The odd thing is that science databases are much easier to search than humanities databases. Science is a more objective field. There isn't much in the way of synonyms and abstract ideas.
On a side note, my first reference request was "vapor intrusion", which sounds somewhat like that murderous mist in Jordan's impossibly long series.
Summer's End
7 years ago
4 comments:
Whoa whoa whoa whoa!!!! You're reading Jordan's crap? The man has been shoveling out unmitigated poo for the past 5 years and you're reading it?
Oh, well, I'm right there rolling around in the muck and offal with you, so I can say nothing except TOMORROW MORNING I COME TO LIFE! Now if only JB would open up before 9...
I was rolling in the muck, way back in college when you were talking about the series, and I noticed that my dad was reading them. Even Mom joined in on the fun. Then about book 5 or 6 (or was it 7 or 8..?) we both got tired of Jordan's meandering pen and quit reading it.
I will admit, though, that the first book was decent. How else could I have been drawn into the series in the first place? On a related note, now that I think of it, Eragon begins in a similar way. Did Paolini copy Jordan, or is this the standard way to open 'bildungsroman' (sic.) stories?
Umm, I haven't read Paolini and don't think I ever could. High fantasy is so saturated right now with all of this overwraught stories that are really little more than retellings of ol' Tollers and medieval works. As one of my UK profs said, that "motherf.ing monomyth."
What is the intro to Eragon? I glanced at it in JB the other day and just couldn't bring myself to do it.
That is exactly the way I feel. Jon told me that Paolini had the gall to equate himself with Tolkien on the Today show a while back.
I fell into reading his stuff while I was full-time at Jo-Beth. It's decent, a little bit too flowery at times. I would recommend it to kids looking for fantasy, and will continue to read it myself for the same reasons you read Jordan.
The opening has an orphan who has no idea who his parents are, and he lives with his uncle and older cousin. Strange beings come and burn down his house and kill his uncle while he is off hunting. And he's off into hiding and quickly learns about the larger world beyond his own little valley..
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